


Navigating Limbo

by brokenmemento



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, F/F, Post-Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2019-10-10 10:07:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17423864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: Grace and Frankie are still displaced after the sale of the house and must learn to function in limbo with ongoing developments to their dynamic with one another.





	1. Dislocation

**Author's Note:**

> Idea loosely taken from ellydash's "Five Kinks" piece on Tumblr. I wanted to drop you a note for permission but it wouldn't let me. I felt the need to do give you credit though.

The “For Sale: Sold” sign is the worst thing Frankie’s ever had to look at visually. And being an artist, she is quite familiar with the beautiful and the haggard. She’d like to feel anger or rage or anything else other than the hollowness that carves caverns in her chest. It’s kind of like erosion, which she’d once compared herself to. It takes what exists and whittles away, leaving something that doesn’t much resemble the thing it used to be. Forever changed, forever affected.

“Where do we go? What do we do now?” Grace asks in a voice that’s much smaller than her usual tone.

Options, at this point, are limited. Frankie will make a sandcastle hut on the beach before she asks either of the sets of children to stay with them. Robert and Sol have been oddly accepting of the fact that the two of them wound up in Walden Villas to begin with. They’re too busy galavanting about being weird philanderers, so fuck them very much, thank you.

Frankie still remembers their first visit after she and Grace had moved in. Robert and Grace were talking out of the porch while she sat brooding at the bar counter, dipping pretzel sticks in her fondue while Sol hovered annoyingly nearby.

“Frankie, you and Grace have a nice place. I could see you learning to be happy here,” he offered, with a well-intending smile on his face.

“You, I don’t know, don’t find this whole situation a little shitty? Grace and I wind up here, thrown away, while the two of you goons are supposedly in your prime, having dinner parties and getting propositioned for threesomes,” Frankie asked.

Sol leaned in close, glanced toward the porch, looked as if he was about to have a panic attack. His eyebrows were raised in hysteria and for a second, Frankie completely understood the chinchilla metaphor.

“You’re not supposed to know about that!” he whispered hoarsely. “Robert still thinks I’m unusually forthcoming with you, despite our divorce. And post-divorce sexual encounter. And me saying you’re my soulmate.”

Frankie glanced up from the liquid lake of molten cheese in front of her and laughed mirthlessly.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Sol. The point I’m trying to make is that I don’t belong here, not really,” Frankie growled, cast her eyes toward the thin whippet of a body of her bosom friend. “Neither of us do.”

“You said it yourself. Grace was struggling before the knee surgery with the stairs. Recovery couldn’t have been easy with her having to make the trek each night to sleep. Maybe this is going to be a better situation for her. But you could always find a place…”

“I’m not going anywhere without her,” Frankie had said. And that had remained true.

Now as she gazes out toward the ocean, she thinks of the tides retreating and returning each day. Wishes she was a body of water capable of flowing in that way.

She thinks and thinks and all she can come up with is the one place she doesn’t much want to show up: Teddie’s. It’s for this reason that calling the woman is the biggest dent in her pride that she’s ever received. Ambushes and card games aside, they’re still maneuvering through their rough and bumpy past.

Teddie picks up on the fourth ring, one before Frankie decidedly says fuck it all together.

“I need a favor,” leaves Frankie’s mouth, sounding a little deflated and resigned even to her own ears.

Grace stares at her on the phone, looking as downtrodden. Frankie knows she’s not going to like what comes next, but it’s a hell of a lot better than where they’ve come from. That, in and of itself, is something. However small.

******************

Teddie opens the door looking skeptical as Frankie breezes by her with a loaded suitcase. Grace remains frozen on the front doorstep, no doubt waiting to be invited in. Frankie wants to tell her she’ll be standing there forever if that’s what she’s waiting on, so she deposits the bag and grabs Grace by the arm, dragging her inside and shutting the door.

“Grace, this is Teddie. Teddie, Grace,” Frankie introduces them. Watches as Grace extends a hand cordially with a tight smile. She had to practically beg her to come here. Not that she blames Grace for not wanting to.

“So, you’re the alcoholic drug addict my sister has been living with the last four years that I’ve heard so much about,” Teddie snottily says, grasping Grace’s hand.

Yeah, Frankie can totally understand Grace’s protestations at this option.

She watches as shock flits across her face and then is masked by the oh-so-perfect facade that Grace always goes to in social situations where she is on the defense.

“Nice to meet you,” she answers meekly and Frankie can’t help but frown. The old Grace would have squared her shoulders and denied the accusation, however true. The old Grace wouldn’t have put up with this shit. The old Grace is someone who Frankie sees chipping away. New Grace just lets it slide as if it were never spoken.

“Spare room is over here. There’s only one bed and a couch, so we will have to make it work,” Frankie explains, to shift attention away from the staredown happening between the two of them.

“Let's get settled in and we can catch up. Or get acquainted. Or...whatever.”

Grabbing Grace’s free hand that isn’t gripping a suitcase, she begins to pull her down the hall. _Why do I feel like I just brought my girlfriend home and my parents don’t approve_ , Frankie muses as her fingers tighten to squeeze Grace’s, who follows silently behind her.

Once they get into the room, Frankie slams the door and leans against it feeling exhausted. Grace stands in the middle of the room, immobile, no doubt feeling out of place. It’s not as if Frankie fits in even more here. They’re both on equal footing as far as Teddie is concerned. Frankie’s not even sure why she agreed to host them for the indefinite future considering their rocky past.

“Uh, you can take the bed. I’ll nab the couch. I’m used to spending most of my nights out in the studio anyway,” Frankie says pointing toward the simple quilted full bed in front of her. Grace only nods and puts her luggage on top of it, sits slowly and doesn’t speak.

As much as Frankie would like to unpack, she’s never quite seen her roommate like this so she makes her way to the bed and perches next to Grace. Her hand works on its own volition, coming to rest on Grace’s thigh as a thumb lazily rubs her through the fabric of her jeans. Frankie can’t help but stare at the woman in front of her who refuses to make eye contact, instead keeping her gaze cast down at her feet and the floor.

“She’s not wrong, you know,” Grace whispers. “I am those things she said.”

This is big, even for Grace. Frankie leans back a little, shakes her head and sighs. The new Grace lets things get to her. While she had once threatened to climb and clamber to get past Grace’s emotional walls, this raw honesty Frankie is seeing hurts her a little too. It’s like seeing a wound too big to heal.

“Don’t pay her any mind,” Frankie dismisses with the wave of her hand. “She’s being disagreeable because of me. It has nothing to do with you.”

“It was aimed toward me, so it sure felt like it.”

“She’s just trying to get at me the way she knows will hurt me the most,” Frankie lets loose, then stops and realizes what she’s said. Grace’s head has jerked up at the sentence and she’s staring Frankie down in a silent question. Then it isn’t silent anymore.

“How?”

It is redundant almost, the truth so clearly evident that Frankie almost feels like a fool for answering. Almost.

“With you,” she admits quietly. Her heart should be pounding out of her chest, but an odd air of contentment is left behind. It’s almost cathartic to say, to let Grace know Teddie’s the one person who can get Frankie worked up like a Drake song: 0 to 100, real quick.

“I…” Grace begins, but Frankie can’t let it continue, the frayed lilt in it a little too defined.

“Hey, I mean, that’s what I get, right? After four years, some things were bound to change between us,” Frankie stands in order to avoid the heaviness floating. Deflection, yes. That’s key. “When you said I like to be with you all the time? You were right.” She shrugs at this as if it’s nothing instead of everything. “Only I guess it’s gotten stronger since then. Being alone at our age blows. And I know that’s sort of the condition of humanity but I’ve got to say, doing this part of life with you is more rad than going it alone.”

Because wasn’t it supposed to be her and Sol? Or her and her boys, navigating her through the ending years? It’s all become blurry since Grace. And while the notion of it would have been completely ludicrous 1,460 days ago, now it’s all Frankie can seem to want or need: her life with Grace.

Grace looks about ready to burst at the seams and it’s a part of this _new_ her that Frankie is having a hell of a time pegging squarely. The lines, the boundaries, keep changing and definitively defining this new being her friend is morphing into is difficult.

She grabs at Frankie’s hand then, says nothing. Somehow it’s alright though. Frankie knows, just knows, she feels the same. For now, the sentiment is worth more than the declaration. Somewhere down the road, that might come too. Until then, Frankie stuffs the gesture and the look on Grace’s face deep into her heart.

******************

Teddie always did have a holier than thou attitude, but this is downright bullshit. She’s spent the last half hour tediously combing through every crevice and potential hiding spot, looking for her bong that she is 99% sure she left on the bottom shelf of the nightstand. Out of sight but not out of mind.

They’ve only been here two days and the damn thing has seemingly sprouted legs and disappeared. That’s the route she would likely trek, were she not an amateur sleuth and not a master at knowing the habits of her sibling.

It’s been a few long years since they’ve really known one another, but she knows her sister is the culprit. It’s the same m.o. she’s always had, looking for an excuse to become Frankie’s life coach and turn her from her evil ways. The old saying goes, you usually find something in the last place you look, so it really shouldn’t shock her that she finds the damn thing on a shelf in Teddie’s closet behind her professorially tinged foot attire.

Her knees will hate her tomorrow, even if her joints are supple, from jumping up to grab it almost out of reach. It’s worth it though when she finally snatches it from its hiding spot and plants kisses on its glass surface. Making her way back to their room, she catches a heated tone in the foyer area of the house.

Never one to pass up a good eavesdropping experience, Frankie creeps around the corner to see what all of the hubbub is about. That’s when a lump catches in her throat. The pissed off person is clearly Teddie speaking. But then another voice interjects and slices the berating into. _Grace_.

“I’ve heard so much about you over the years. About how hateful you were to Frankie and the mean things you’ve said and did. I’m honestly surprised she brought you here, considering how much complaining I’ve had to hear about you,” Teddie tells Grace.

 _No, no. Not anymore_. Hadn’t she made that clear? Frankie thinks, but can’t say anything or they will absolutely know she invited herself to their conversation.

“I haven’t always been the nicest to Frankie, that’s true. But I’ve been trying harder, doing everything I can to make up for it,” Grace concedes a bit.

“Sounds like she needs to grow a little bit of a backbone where you are concerned.”

Frankie peeks around the corner warily, but neither disengages from the conversation to see her. They’re both too busy being focused solely on each other, on slinging barbs that are meant to wound. Grace has been taking them since she crossed the threshold to Teddie’s home, so Frankie wonders how much more she can take, the barrage neverending.

“People can change. I’ve had four years. I’m not the same person I was when Frankie and I moved in together,” Grace’s tone goes steely, a warning somewhere wrapped inside of it. Frankie waits for evisceration.

“Yes, but that’s the key. Have you _really_? I recall being in the home both of you shared not too long ago, which Frankie tells me is now in shambles, no thanks to you,” Teddie swipes again.

“Yes but…”

“And I vividly remember seeing things in disarray. Shutters falling from hinges, water stains on the ceiling. We played cards and used a pill box full of drugs for poker chips and I’m pretty sure I saw every brand of vodka ever manufactured in various places around your place. In spots you normally wouldn’t find them,” Teddie says with a raised eyebrow and crossed arms. “So excuse me for being a little concerned about the well being of my sister.”

Frankie desperately wants to jump in, ride to Grace’s defense and dismount from her white steed to save her. But then Frankie reminds herself, Grace is no damsel, she no knight in shining armor. She’s not even supposed to be here, never mind the overall, but listening in to what’s being talked about.

“I’d do anything for her,” Grace murmurs then, a hint of reverence in her voice.

Frankie presses herself against the wall, her own heart feeling as if it can’t take much more of this. She’d known she’s felt that exact same way about Grace, had given up everything to be with her in the retirement community. She’d assumed that Grace had begrudgingly agreed because of her knee and her overly persuasive children, despite telling Frankie she had joined her because she couldn’t leave her alone. Hearing it now, echoed to her family member, hammers the sentiment home.

“I just want what’s best for Frankie,” her sister finally sighs, sounding defeated. “But Grace, maybe you need to be asking yourself: are you it?”

She doesn’t have to look around the corner to know what Grace is feeling. A version of her own hits her hard. She hears Grace’s intake of breath, can imagine the sag of her shoulders.

It hurts, _ouch_ , does it hurt. To think that Teddie’s words, her behavior, could drive Grace away. What does a life without her look like anymore? Frankie isn’t sure. And now? Now she doesn’t even want to know.

*******************

Grace paces the room, her agitation rolling off of her like waves. Frankie just watches, doesn’t know what to say to her when she gets this worked up even though she has more than ample reason to be. Pep talks during this type of mood are rarely successful.

“This is a nightmare. Your sister is on my ass constantly. Every second she gets, it’s another moment to throw a jab at me. ‘Oh, Grace didn’t eat much off of her plate.’ ‘Grace left her overflowing pillbox on the counter again, that junkie.’ ‘Will you look at that, Grace has tiny airplane bottles of vodka in the medicine cabinet now.’ I mean, what the fuck, Frankie?!” she bemoans.

Frankie lets her, halfway thinks about mentioning the stilted conversation she heard on the other side of a wall, but then doesn’t much feel like ratting herself out. She glances at Grace’s very moving back and forth across the carpet, begins to wonder about friction and how much it takes to burn.

“And on top of that, I dumped Nick over a month ago and I know at my age it really shouldn’t matter, but I haven’t been fucked really well in over thirty days, by myself or anyone else, and quite honestly, it’s starting to grate on my nerves.”

Two things happen simultaneously. One, Frankie cringes at the mere mention of the corporate weasel and two, she feels her pulse speed up at the mention of Grace masturbating. Sure, they’ve talked about it in generic terms where the business is concerned, but mostly it stays at that: impersonal and broad. Now, there is literally no alone time to give in to an urge such as that. She has felt it too often lately as well, several things serving as a catalyst to that sensation. Apparently, this is another one, the casual mention of it enough to intrigue Frankie beyond a healthy level.

Grace looks up from pacing and throws an apologetic look to Frankie.

“I’m sorry. I guess all of this is just wearing me down. While I don’t miss Walden Villas, I do miss our home,” she confesses.

 _So you can retreat to a room I’m not in or near and give yourself an orgasm_. Frankie’s internal voice is hella strong on the sass game today.

“So Nick was a good fuck?” Frankie spills out. Totally not what she intended to say. Not even close.

“ _That’s_ what you zeroed in on, out of my whole soliloquy?”

“Well, it certainly was the most entertaining part.”

Grace flops down beside Frankie and buries her face in her hands. They both remain silent, Grace obviously dodging the question. Probably thinking Frankie wasn’t serious in its askance, another casual joke. And when it boils down to it, Frankie isn’t sure she wants to know the answer to it anyway.

“Not always,” is murmured at a level Frankie almost misses. Grace turns and actually faces her. “There were some good moments but he didn’t know my body like I do, how to get it there. I guess I didn’t offer any tips either.”

“So what does it take, Grace?” Frankie asks. The question surprises her, thinking she had thought it only in her head again. She wants to curse and say she’s sorry for being so personal, but then something happens that rips the breath from her lungs.

“I like to warm myself up with a bit of teasing, caressing. All of the places on my body I know will respond, that I like to be touched? I do that. When I can feel the sensations begin to pull at me, my next step is to grab your lube. It adds a layer of sensuality to the experience and gets me ready for the final stage.”

The room is swirling and this is so fucking dangerous. Heat permeates everything and Frankie is absolutely sure the room is existing with a near zero percent oxygen level because if this goes on anymore, she might pass out.

“Which is what?” she boldly inquires.

“Depends on my mood,” Grace answers softly, lowly. There’s almost a tangible grate to her voice that sounds as if it’s straining to come out of her throat. Like she’s exerting so much effort to admit what she’s talking about. Her fingers gently trace Frankie’s hand and it’s all she can do to keep from asking Grace what the fuck she’s doing. “Sometimes, I switch out between the different Ménage’s we sell. I’ve got my original one, plus our mini version. Other times, I take the chance on my arthritis flaring and use my fingers, just for a variety. It keeps things from getting old. Like us.”

Grace laughs, offhandedly pleased by her own quip, then glances up at Frankie who is practically hyperventilating. This was a bad idea. A colossally horrible idea. Frankie is teetering on things that would resituate them back on safer ground and completely blowing that to hell by continuing with this line of questioning.

“You could do it here, if you really need to. I can leave or...give you some space at night instead of being next to you in bed. Maybe I can notify you of a really long shower I plan to take so you can…” Frankie trails off, stupidly looks down at Grace’s lap. “Take care of yourself.”

“That’s sweet of you, Frankie. But what about you? What about your needs?”

The look on Grace’s face is so genuine, so full of concern, that Frankie speaks a secret truth.

“All I need is you,” she replies. Oops. Fucking hell...

Grace’s breath hitches and she looks stunned. Frankie herself halfway is but then again, she should have expected as much considering her filter seems to either be malfunctioning or broken completely. A knock at the door sounds and they both jump apart, like their hands were buried in each other and they’ve been caught.

Teddie pokes her head in, looks at the two of them with flushed faces and erratic breathing, and Frankie knows how guilty as fuck they both look. Even though nothing, not physically anyway, was happening. Emotionally though? She’s sure her sister can feel the scorching heat burn from their risky conversation.

“I made supper. You two are welcome to join me,” Teddie offers, then beats a hasty retreat. On autopilot, Frankie stands and follows closely behind. It seems so much safer to subject herself to Teddie’s snide comments than to continue to share air with a woman she’s sure she just crossed a line she can never sneak back across with.

**********************

The food feels too dense like it’s been delivered in block form instead of normally. Frankie finds it hard to chew, hard to inhale anything other than thick tension that permeates everything.

No one is offering any conversation for the mealtime hour, not even herself. It’s not like she’d know what to say anyway. Befitting actually, that she’s in this situation where all the parties involved in this are destitute with the missing.

Teddie’s lost her relationship with her sister after actually losing their brother. Grace doesn’t have a house to hide in or a martini to drown in after removing herself from a relationship that was toxic from the get-go, and Frankie is scraping for any normalcy to be had in a temporary place with what feel like temporary people. With people who should absolutely feel more completely etched into Frankie’s being.

Teddy with her fickle attitude and Grace with her unending ideas of needing to entertain men to feel some semblance of self. Can’t Frankie just reach over and smack them both to smithereens?

A clock ticks on the wall behind Grace’s head and Frankie can feel the anxiety in her nerves with every second marching into the past.

She makes the mistake of catching Grace’s eye, knows on the outside of their microcosm that it looks like they’re speaking without doing so. Like there’s a secret being passed between them that only they can be privy to. It’s the kind of look that says _give_ and _I need to take_ and maybe that’s why Grace opens her mouth to rid the room of silence. She never gets a word out.

“So, Frankie,” Teddie begins and Frankie tenses inadvertently. Underneath the table, fingers. Then comes a palm. They inch higher than hands should really go. The tablecloth bunches a bit in Frankie’s own and the metal causes her hand to sweat even though she knows Grace is trying to calm her. “How’s the house hunt going?”

 _It isn’t_ , she wants to say. Admitting she’s no closer to leaving than she ever was seems too much though.

“Great actually,” Grace intervenes and takes a fork full of green beans into her mouth. Her hand doesn’t move and even curls a little around the upper part of Frankie’s thigh.

Teddie whips her head around to look at Grace instead of Frankie. Those fingers under the table tighten. So do the knots in Frankie’s stomach.

“Yeah, we have discussed a few places,” Grace nods, sounding more upbeat than she looks. Teddie doesn’t call her out on her shit though.

“Maybe an apartment will work better for us,” Frankie mentions as she finally joins the conversation. “Something nice. Room to smoke my bong and that doesn’t cost half of Vybrant’s profits.”

Teddie’s face pinches in on itself, no doubt from the jab about the bong. “Oh, good. I was wondering how long it would take to bring up that business of yours. Vibrators, of all things.”

Frankie feels her hackles rise but it’s Grace who takes the line and runs with it.

“Yes, our _vibrator_ business,” she says, added emphasis to the word and throwing back her shoulders. “Our business which has been growing steadily since we started it. You wouldn’t believe the market we’ve tapped into. It seems like there are a lot of women out there unsatisfied. With our product, they aren’t afraid to give themselves what they need.”

“The sex industry though? You couldn’t have picked something easier to bring up in a conversation?”

“Who says it isn’t? I have no trouble talking about pleasing myself,” Frankie huffs, then looks over at Grace. Her _hand._

“No,” Grace agrees and clears her throat, recovers quickly.  Her tone goes dry. “You’re pretty good at oversharing.”

She backtracks to the discussions of yam lube, asking if Grace had an orgasm, if Nick had been inside her. All of it seeming so long ago. Has she been asking the same thing in a different way for the last four years? The questions, the touches. _The hand_ , now removed but it’s imprint seared. The truth is stark but she shakes her head and moves on.

“She once did an interpretive dance on the benefits of going au-naturale vs shaving and waxing,” Teddie agrees and lets out a laugh.

Grace, for half a second, looks like she wants to as well but then her face goes serious and she glances down. Like she’s trying to figure out if Frankie’s interpretive dance 15 years ago still rings true.

“No kidding,” Grace finally murmurs and Frankie just about jumps out of her skin when she sees her fidget beside her and then, after wiping her mouth with her napkin, connecting her hand again.

 _Sweet Christ on a cracker_ , Frankie thinks and then reaches for her water glass, taking a generous swallow. She’s got to steer this conversation back to solid ground.

“Anyway,” Frankie speaks up, more than done with anything on her plate at this point. Food can get fucked for once because there’s that urge that won’t fucking go away anymore and it’s maddening. “With what all that’s going on, since we are stuck here a few more weeks, I’d introduce you to Bud and Coyote. You know, if I were speaking to them.” She sighs and Grace’s fingers squeeze.

“Still on the outs?” Teddie questions, takes a bite.

“Indefinitely,” Grace answers for Frankie icily. Her own daughters not too far removed from the equation of Grace+Frankie+stupid offspring=retirement home.

“Hopefully things start looking up, on all fronts,” Teddie says brightly. Uncharacteristically so. “I’d like to finally meet everyone.”

Frankie highly doubts that but it’s a hell of a lot safer to discuss that than vibrators or the appearance of her genitals with or without hair. Not like there’s much difference between the two these days.

“Maybe,” Frankie shrugs. “Someday.”

It’s easier to leave a chapter open, waiting for the possibility, than to close on it without ever reaching the end. Frankie lets this settle in her as she looks down at the aged skin of Grace’s fingers and how she grips Frankie resolutely. _Yes_ , Frankie thinks. Singular, but infinite. Open to so much possibility.

 


	2. Pacification

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally started writing this before season 5 aired and time just got away from me. It will have some references to it now though since I didn't get this finished when I wanted to. 
> 
> Also, I'm bumping the rating up. This chapter is pretty graphic.

Grace creates something that hadn't much been at the core of Frankie’s daily thoughts. Until now. Sure, she manages to go most of the time without dwelling on what they’ve discussed but she feels a twinge of it when they deposit themselves under covers for the night. The not-so-distant past as stark as if it’s just happened.

From that point on, every touch holds a beating of suggestion to Frankie, of a cataclysmic longing that feels weirdly normal to want. It’d be so much easier, so much safer to stay on the recesses of a space Grace doesn’t occupy, to bury under layers to block out any and all thoughts of Grace. The prospect of touch is heavy, a wanton emotion she can’t afford to have and own.

But she remains, neither immobile or impassive. She toes the boundary of acceptability because living in limbo is simply something she is tired of doing. So yeah, she stands a little closer to Grace and finds an excuse for being near her when the situation doesn’t exactly call for it. She’s balancing precariously on the precipice of want and need, of good reason and beautiful chaos.

She needs to let Grace continue to be the person she’s always been, but she really wants her to abandon it all.

She’s sorting it all out in her mind, tossing on the couch when Grace enters, fresh and looking absolutely divine. Frankie lets out a wince, screwing her eyes tightly shut, but still is assaulted by the olfactory ambiance of the body ten feet away.

“Your back again?”

 _No, yo_ u, Frankie wants to admit but leaves it only a passing thought, shoving it on its way out. “Something like that,” is all she can manage, what’s she’s feeling something akin to pain, but in the not having of, not of possession.

“If it’s a flare-up, no amount of Tiger Balm or Back Nobber Two, Three, or Seven will help it. It definitely doesn’t need the trauma of sleeping on the couch. Until you’re over it, I’ll begrudgingly let you join this already too small bed. Just...try not to do midnight karate,” Grace says, pulling back the covers and throwing another pillow on the opposite side. She points to it when Frankie doesn’t make to move toward it. “Well?”

“Right, sure, sure,” Frankie answers but knows more than damn well this is a mistake because her back isn’t in agony-it’s her heart and her mind and what’s between her thighs. All of which stupidly scream as she tucks herself under the cotton sheet.

“Goodnight, Frankie,” Grace says and flips off the switch to the light. It plunges the room into a soft darkness and silence envelopes.

Frankie can just make the outline of Grace’s chin, her lips, and nose, the slope of her forehead. She fights not to roll over and bring a leg across Grace’s body, to curl into her like one night not so long ago when she’d felt melancholy down to her bones inside of the home and sought out the clean sanctuary of Grace’s bedding.

The light has been out a few minutes and their shoulders make contact, grazing each other through a layer of clothing that, to Frankie, might as well not exist at all. The overwhelming compulsion to say something about their earlier conversation bubbles and boils, threatens to spill.

That persnickety thought that’s been bouncing around flares again, the one that keeps saying _now,_ _holy shit, now_ , she wants to know everything about Grace, even the intimate parts of her. She wouldn’t have offered up such a revelation if she didn’t want something out of it, surely.

“So uh, super cool of you to let me crash your sleeping arrangements. I know you were less thrilled with me last time,” Frankie says, trying to rid her mind of other, more complicated things.

“Please don’t talk about weird things in your sleep,” Grace pleads, the light from outside the window casting a beautiful shadow across her face.

“You know as well as I do that my subconscious doesn’t do well at being contained. It just kind of leaks out what it’s thinking,” Frankie answers. She doesn’t point out that there have been a few last times, that the break-in isn’t the only time she’s been in a bed with the woman beside her.

Maybe it’s what happens all the time in retirement homes. On lonely nights with lonely hearts. When souls are full and joy lives in rafters and past fan blades. It could be where solace lives now, Frankie seeking and Grace offering more often than she even can realize.

“There’s only so much more panting and moaning that I can stand listening to you do though,” she says. Grace props up on an elbow then and turns to face Frankie. “What on earth are you dreaming of?”

If Frankie had any clue, she’d divulge it. For the life of her though, she can’t remember. None of it comes as a lucid dream really, instead fizzling away not long after their inceptions. She doesn’t remember having any of _those_ kinds of dreams,  or near Grace, but she doesn’t have the best kind of memory either. She has been longer without Jacob that Grace has Nick and her daytime musings have certainly contained a bit of the scandalous. Night is probably no exception.

“Beats me,” she answers truthfully, even though Grace looks at her suspiciously. “I’m serious! Scout’s honor.” Her fingers mimic the promise.

“Alright,” Grace concedes. “I was worried I was going to have to do something about it.” She starts to resituate herself back into her normal position.

“Like what?” Frankie shoots back in challenge. She’s the one who makes glib comments about doing things to one another, not Grace. And honestly is she had time to think about what that might mean about herself, she would. But it seems bigger than definition, so she just rolls with it.

“You seriously want to know?” Grace says with surprise lacing her voice.

They don’t do this. It isn’t them. They throw out something ridiculous, dodge it, then move on. When did retreat cease to be a thing they did when everything got too heavy?

And while Frankie is thinking of it, yes, she absolutely, 100%, sincerely wants to know. But deep down, she knows it’s too close. Too everything when it boils down to it and they aren’t _there_ yet...can’t be when they’re still dwelling in someone else’s life and removed from their own.

“It’s late. I bet you’re tired. We could put it on the shelf for another day,” Frankie concedes, quietly.

It’s really not late at all, just past ten. But the situation they’re in has made her weary and with the odd deviation from the ordinary going on between her and Grace, her own tiredness settles.

Grace lets it go easily, says goodnight, and rolls over in the other direction. Frankie on the other hand, stays in her position. Their shoulders are no longer touching and she misses the sensation, wishes she had indulged Grace in the flight of fancy.

Minutes stack and sleep doesn’t come easy or come at all. She lies awake thinking, just thinking. The breaths from the opposite side of the bed have evened out and Frankie assumes Grace is somewhere in dreamland. Lucky her.

Thoughts come in a barrage and she can’t help but spin them around over and over in her mind. At some point, light begins to filter through the window in the room and when she can’t stand it any longer, she decides to exit the bed.

Carefully, she raises up and glances over at a sleeping Grace next to her. No pictures today, but man, what a sight. It’s both a blessing and a tragedy to feel everything so acutely. To be able to look upon her in moments like this and take them for herself. She fights to not run a hand down Grace’s body, rouse her awake and tell her the yearnings of her heart. Instead, she settles for only the visual of her, abandoning the tactile and slipping from the bed and out the door.

In the kitchen, she pours a bowl of cereal and is staring at its milky contents when she hears Teddie behind her. Her shoulders slump and all she can think is, _it’s too early for_ _this_.

“My, my, aren’t we rising early. Pretty sure you haven’t seen this time of day in years. What gives?” Teddie asks.

Rather than taking the snarky bait, Frankie just answers. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Stuffing a full bed with two bodies does seem a bit uncomfortable. But then again, your roommate does have the figure of a bird. Oh dear, I do hope ‘roommate’ was the right terminology. It’s hard to figure out what to call her when you act the way you do with her.”

More jabs. They’re beginning to chip away at any hope of keeping her mouth shut. Frankie would love nothing more to turn, face her head on, and ask her what the hell she’s getting at, but she already knows and it’s hella dangerous.

“Just call her by her name,” Frankie offers as a solution to a problem that only belongs to Teddie.

“And miss figuring out what the hell is going on here? Hardly.”

Surface destroyed. Frankie can no longer find it in herself to hold back. “You may get to throw that attitude at her and have her take it, but I’ve had seventy-four years of dealing with you, so you better expect to deal with me losing my shit here.”

Teddie walks over to the counter of the bar and leans in close to Frankie, taking her voice down to a grating whisper. “Can you blame me for wanting answers? Before we don’t talk for years, all I hear about is this woman who treats you like trash and how you can’t believe Sol makes you interact with her and her husband. All of a sudden, fast forward and you show back up in my life, living with her no less, and bringing her to my doorstep. You try to protect her at all costs and for the life of me, I can’t understand why.”

“She’s not the same,” Frankie shoots back, dangling by the thread. Keeping a level head is growing harder to do with every barb.

“Help me out here. What kind of conversation should you and I be having? Because while I’ve been out of the loop for a lot of years and I’m no rocket scientist, just a regular one, it doesn’t take one to figure out what it looks like is going on.”

“Man, I’m so glad we came here then because I absolutely have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about,” Frankie says in a faux sense of awe.

“Are the two of you sleeping together?”

“You just commented on both of us fitting into a full bed. Pretty sure already knew that.”

Teddie huffs and sighs, exasperation clearly flaring. She tilts her head and squints her eyes, an angry expression crossing her features. “Don’t be obtuse. You _know_ what I’m asking.”

 _Are all straights this way_? Frankie thinks then stumbles a little on her internal thought. But isn’t she in that category too? She doesn’t quite know because she’s never defined herself but…

“Oh, give it a rest, will you? We aren’t having sex. I’m too old for that shit.”

“You make vibrators,” Teddie points out.

“Okay, touché. Look, no. Grace and I aren’t having hot, passionate lesbian vibrator sex or otherwise. She’s my friend. My best friend. My best friend who I just happen to annoy by being a bed partner in the nighttime hours upon occasion.” She nods to project satisfaction in her rebuttal to a rebuttal but it doesn’t resonate all the way through.

She begins to think then, really think, about how maybe a home isn’t so much a structure, but a person, people. One you can be okay with letting yourself live inside, even if you are worried about internal structural damage. Maybe if she hadn’t already lost a physical home, Frankie would be more careful about her emotional one. Letting herself be enclosed by Grace seems to be the only solid thing she can settle on though, like it was the only option all along.

Teddie looks somewhat dubious but nods, thankfully seeming like she’s loosening her vice grip on the idea. She grabs her mug out of the Keurig and takes a sip while the steam curls around her chin and cheeks.

As if her ears were burning, Grace rounds the corner and stops short when she sees the two of them, Frankie sitting at the counter and Teddie standing behind it. Both look at her and Frankie sees the wariness glide across her face and she rolls her shoulders up like she does when she’s on the defense. Quickly, Frankie spins back around on her stool and plays with the spoon in her bowl. Teddie glances down but takes her coffee and leaves the room with a tight nod in Grace’s direction.

“She hates me,” Grace sighs and then her hand is touching Frankie’s lower back. She almost jumps out of her skin when the gentle ease of it lands. “Still hurting?” The concern in her tone is easy to pick out but Frankie decides to tackle the sentences she’s spoken in order.

“She doesn’t like anyone, but I think she’s just being overprotective at the moment. My back is fine. Thank you for asking about my well being,” she says slowly. Even though she’s said her back is fine, Grace presses her fingers heavily into the flesh.

“Okay,” Grace sighs and sits, finally removing her hand. She doesn’t make to move toward food. Frankie would ask her if she’s hungry but knows her better.

They sit in silence for a while, neither hardly moving. The coffee cup sits beside Grace’s right hand but she gives it no pressing of her lips. Everything’s so still…

“Teddie thinks things. About you. And me,” Frankie blurts. She freezes after the garble hits her ears for a replay. Well, that wasn’t supposed to come out.

“Like what?” Grace’s voice is cautious, wary. It takes on the type of inflection one tends to have when one is scared of what comes next. “What ‘things’ are we talking about here?”

“Her definition of the partner might be a little skewed where we are concerned.”

Frankie watches out of the corner of her eye as Grace picks up the cup, drinks slowly and heartily. She shakes her head after the not exactly a sip and rolls her shoulders back. Frankie, while slightly shocked that she didn’t offer an immediate comeback, assumes that Grace is contemplating what she’s just been told.

“It doesn’t matter, right? I mean, we know what we are,” Grace finally says.

“Yeah,” Frankie lets out a huff, more than a little deflated from her words. What has she been wanting to be real for so long?

“She’s not the first one anyway. I’ve dealt with it for the last two years, so I’m used to it by now.”

Frankie jerks her head up. “Used to what?”

“The guy at the Food Giant once told me after I let you hang liberation signs on the lobster tank that I must really love you,” Grace shrugs but doesn’t look at Frankie when she says this.

Jackhammers and racehorses have nothing on Frankie’s pulse because it’s going a mile a minute while her heart works on overdrive. She’s way too old for this, to ride an emotional coaster that has no end in sight.

She’s split and it’s a self-created agony really. The Frankie that exists because of Grace, because of all that she is and could be. The sweet potential of fruition and a life where the guy at the Food Giant could absolutely know she loves Grace too because she’s toned it way down to only going in there for the nice vegan curry instead of trying to change the world one sea creature at a time.

The other Frankie exists in spite of Grace, the repressed and scared cowering thing that can’t find her way out of the love tunnel she’s in. It’s dark but there’s light and she keeps on hunting for a way out, but no way looks good or right. And when she exits, what will the world think? (Because she’s been in that tunnel for a while now and no one seems to have noticed the old her is missing)

“And then there was the cop, remember? After the break in? He called us ‘adorable’ and ‘wives.’ He just assumed,” she continues on. She touches her neck then, below the popped collar, and Frankie watches the trail her fingers make up and down its expanse, a nervous gesture. “He didn’t even ask. He just assumed. Everyone just assumes. Even Nick.”

“What!?” Frankie spins and croaks out because, honestly, no fucking way.

Grace’s shoulders are still squared and her chin is jutted out as her gaze flicks over to Frankie. “Oh, sure. He said I was ashamed of him. Said that you were, what were his words?  Ah, ‘territorial’ over me and that I kept him away from you on purpose. That’s why I wouldn’t let him stay at the house. Because there, it was just us and I didn’t want anyone messing that up. Because in that house, there was no room for him. Just us.”

Her voice is ragged by the end of her explanation, chocked full of something that Frankie can’t even begin to touch.

“I don’t want to mess up anything,” Frankie grumbles. Halfway admits she might actually be trying to do what she’s been accused of.

“I’m doing that myself,” Grace sighs. “And I messed up Jacob. That man hated me. What was I thinking?” She hangs her head and continues. “I guess I reasoned with myself that maybe if you saw how great San Diego was, how much everyone needed you. How much I needed you…” she stops. “That maybe Santa Fe wouldn’t look so good in the morning. But it did, I guess.” She smiles widely then, but one of those kinds you give people to appease them or to be a sarcastic asshole. (Frankie has always been spotty on the details between the two.)

Talk about a complete one-eighty. Five seconds ago, they’d been on the verge of some heavy shit. Now, they’re on the verge of heavy shit alright, but not the transcendent kind. Anger flares, a wedge between what had been there an instant before.

“Do you hold that against me?” Frankie says quietly. “Because it still seems like you like to throw that up every now and again.”

“Frankie, no, I…”

“Yeah, it was a shit show and I admitted that. And yeah, the long distance thing didn’t work out with Jacob as I’d hoped. But I had to try. I mean, what would you have had, me stay here and cramp your style every time Nick came over?”

“Frankie…”

“And can you blame me for wanting to start over and try something new? Everyone else was doing it. Robert and Sol get to have their fun and then my boys and your girls are doing things. It’s not like any of them have time for a little old lady. We had Panic Alerts to babysit us.”

“Frankie, please,” Grace pleads. A touch lands, soft and delicate despite the heat in the room and the heat in Frankie’s body, just on top of her knee. It threatens to creep up on her thigh, like it belongs there, like it’s its place.

“And you. You’re worst of all. I come back from Santa Fe, only to find a lodger had taken up refuge in my studio, decking it out in the worst color on earth almost. Then you’re all Loosey Goosey and I’ve got to figure out who the hell you are again. Who we are again. And then you start banging the guy who plagiarized our idea.”

She’s standing by this point, all fabric and emotions and verbal leakage. If it were possible, she would get ahold of herself but then Grace is standing too and in her space and she can’t breathe anymore. The room’s too big but their space is too small and everything narrows angrily.

“You’ve got no right to pin this all on me,” Grace growls, a fierceness licking her words too. All of a sudden, a noise sounds from a nearby vicinity. They both stay stark still, not moving. The sound keeps on, ever going, and finally, Grace makes a face etched by a whole lot of things. “We have a phone interview with a women’s blog about Vybrant. Well, _I_ do.” The emphasis on ‘I’ isn’t hard to miss.

Her shoulders slump a little and she walks off, grabbing her phone. Answering it, she puts on her best Grace Hanson, grabbing life by the balls voice, and disappears into the direction of their bedroom.

 _The bedroom_ , Frankie scolds herself. Things might be changing but apparently, there’s still a whole lot of shit between them. It’d be great to have a metaphorical shovel but it’s stacked up, greater than her ability to muck it all away.

**********************

It’s weird to not really know how a day passes, but somehow the hours get away from Frankie. Before she knows it, she finds herself with the covers pulled down, pacing the floor and waiting for Grace to come to bed.

They’ve been apart since the morning. Grace had wandered off and done the phone interview while Frankie tried to find a way to calm her spiked nerves. Between Teddie and Grace and herself, there is a whole lot of estrogen dictating the order of things and it’s starting to wear on her normally quirky demeanor.

She waits for what seems like an exorbitant amount of time. While a part of her might be a bit chagrined at Grace, the other part needs her here. To tell her Santa Fe was a blip on the radar of life compared to her life in San Diego. Even forty years isn’t feeling as full as four right now, all because things have changed a bit inside.

Normally she’s good at waiting things out but carrying the mental weight of everything sends her off to sleep before she knows it. It’s a dreamless sleep too, where nothing works its way out of corners or shows up after a period of time.

Her face is pressed to a pillow when she manages to realize she’s choking on a breath when her eyes snap open. Swallowing a few times, she gains her physical and mental equilibrium, remembering what she was doing before the land of sleep cold cocked her into slumber: waiting up to talk to Grace.

Not like she was going to apologize though. Far from it. She’s good at noticing when her Mea Culpa moments are but this sure as shit isn’t one of them. That being said, Grace does deserve clarification on where everything is coming from inside of her, so an explanation should suffice-however close to the vest she has to play it.

Frankie faces away from Grace’s body, which luckily, she can feel dipping the bed further from its weight. She isn’t alone, despite the tete-a-tete earlier. Not necessarily wanting to goad Grace anymore, but not wanting to go to bed with crap between them, she’s about to turn over when something stops her.

Grace isn’t visiting the land of Nod. In fact, she’s doing anything but. Frankie can feel her eyes snap shut at the realization smacks when all of a sudden, it’s gets deathly quiet and still.

Frankie sucks in air, her lungs feel afire. She knows her eyes have to be shut in the most cartoonish of ways, but Grace is still facing away from her. She’d like to be really fucking zen about this but despite trying to control her inhalations and heart rate, neither bodily function seems to want to cooperate.

And really, who the hell could blame them. Frankie knows, _just knows_ , what Grace is doing next to her. Figured it out about 5 seconds after she had brushed off the haze of REM sleep. And it’s driving her insane.

The tell-tale movements, the expenditure of air being pushed out when she hits a particularly sweet spot, the small yet discernible moans that get stifled as soon as they leave her mouth, like she’s biting her lip to keep it in, to not wake Frankie who is already fucking wired.

“Please, Grace. Don’t hide it from me,” slips out and Frankie feels her freeze. “You don’t have to.”

Grace remains still, doesn’t say anything or acknowledge that words have been spoken. She can’t dismiss this, pretend it didn’t happen or that it was something Frankie just imagined incorrectly. Finally, Grace rolls over onto her back, her hand out at a weird angle and not touching the sheets.

 _Holy shit_ , Frankie swallows. _It’s because she’s covered in herself._

In the soft glow, she can see Grace close her eyes as if embarrassed at being caught. She wants to tell her it’s okay, that she has been missing this aspect of her life too, but then…

With the hand that had been on herself and maybe even in herself, she reaches out and grabs Frankie’s right hand. She rolls over to face her and then brings the hand closer to her body, opens her eyes that permeate to the core.

“Help me then” is propositioned and time and life seem to stop.

But then Frankie slides closer and it’s like she’s outside of her body, a spectral being watching what’s going on, what’s about to happen. She licks her lips in anticipation and subconscious be damned. Grace is aching and has commanded something of Frankie that she realizes she wants so badly, she can almost taste the sweet comfort of supplying it.

Grace looks up into Frankie’s eyes, a mix of astonishment and wanton lust glazing them over. This isn’t the version of Grace that Frankie has come to know over the last four years. Sure, she’s always been a sexual creature but never toward Frankie, never this open and unabashed. She’s always feigned disinterest or clipped their discussions off at even the slightest mention of what she enjoys. Now? Now she’s offering it up on a silver platter.

A novice, Frankie isn’t. Not even at this. While it’s been a really long time, she did live through the sixties and seventies, so free love was definitely a thing and one she participated in quite a few times. But being with a woman was only secondary to the high she got from doing something against the norm. To be open for anything has made Frankie’s life infinitely more interesting.

But this? This is something different altogether. This is her roommate. Her best friend. In a world full of lines and cordoned off areas, Frankie wants to jump the fence and bask in all that’s on the other side. Grace places Frankie’s hand on her hip, asking her to leap.

With the hand that wasn’t inside of herself, she guides Frankie’s fingers that have laced with her own and together they pull down her pajama pants. This should be so completely weird but it feels like walking around in heaven as she looks down to where Grace has uncovered herself. It’s still dark and she can’t see much. Her ears don’t work well but her eyes do enough, plenty well to make out the shadowy sight of Grace’s nakedness.

She can vaguely make out a small patch of hair, can see the outline of her slit that her fingers are just itching to touch, but won’t until they’re invited. She refuses to be like all the men in Grace’s life who have just taken what they wanted and left Grace feeling empty. That has to be the reason she’s even entertaining this, in this limbo of a life they’re living.

Frankie wants to fill Grace up, not just physically but emotionally as well. She doesn’t want to be like every other Tom, Nick, and Guy that Grace has chosen to give herself over to. It has to be, needs to be different.

Seeming to sense this, Grace leads Frankie’s hand again until she has her pointer and middle finger atop her clit. She encourages Frankie to begin ministrations and _whoa_. Frankie can feel a bit of the remnant of sticky wetness here too. So she does the only thing she knows to do: she begins to move with more purpose.

She’s good at this with herself, likening it to brushstrokes and a bare canvass. Masturbation has always been a part of her life, a healthy practice she has never shied away from. She knows how to please herself, figured enough out during her past to be a pretty adequate lover. But this is Grace below her and it suddenly feels distinctive from every other encounter in her life.

“Tell me what you like, Grace,” Frankie says, wanting some guidance.

She’s been moving for quite a while, can feel Grace’s body responding to her some. There’s no lube and they haven’t had any in a while. She’d made a batch or two at Walden Villas just to make it feel like old times but even then, it’d been hard to have that time to herself knowing how paper thin the walls were.

“Tell me how to touch you,” Frankie prompts again, looking down between Grace’s legs. She wants to know how to make it good, do exactly what she likes. She wants to give her what she’s been wanting, would fuck her properly if she asked for it.

“Keep your fingers where they are,” Grace commands, brings her own in to assist. Frankie watches as Grace gently tests her readiness, slides first one in, then another.

Frankie’s breath becomes shallow and she can feel her own body lumbering awake, wanting a little of what Grace is getting. To see her being so open, both figuratively and literally, makes Frankie want to moan aloud but she doesn’t want to kill the illusion. Just in case they happen to be teetering on the in between.

Grace’s breathing picks up and she begins to add vocalization. “Press a little harder. And you can speed up a bit.”

Un-fucking-believable. It feels like a fever dream and Frankie would be absolutely stupid to not obey. She does what she is told and is rewarded with noises not many people have had the luxury of hearing. Frankie knows Grace’s “number.” They talked about it when they started the business and she thanks the Gods she is now one of them, albeit in a non-traditional manner.

“I’ve been wanting this for a while,” Grace pants, her fingers going in and retreating out of her. “I’ve been missing it. Our vibrators are amazing but I knew I couldn’t use it without someone hearing. Without you hearing.”

“Oh, I would have loved that,” slips out of Frankie. To think of Grace on the other side of the wall, using her vibrator and trying desperately not to cry out. She begins to think that maybe she too isn’t the same version of herself as she was. In this moment, she’s a person who doesn’t hold back her yearnings, isn’t afraid of sex. She is this other being who does things like pleasuring her best friend. “Grace, we have to stop talking like this or I don’t know if I will be able to stop, period.”

“Join me,” Grace pants. “I can take it from here, but you can do this too. If you want.”

Frankie eats a gulp of air. _Fuck_. This is getting out of hand and she’d meant every word she said. Restraint is nigh impossible at this point, to keep her hands off every inch of Grace.  And now she is asking Frankie to join her in a joint masturbation session and she isn’t sure her heart or brain can make it through without combusting.

“I...I don’t know if I should,” Frankie says, apprehension lacing her words. Yeah, there’s a line and she’s already started rubbing it away but it isn’t completely gone. “You’re my friend, Grace. I’ve already done more than I should have, I’m sure.” Freaking guilt…

Grace pulls her fingers out of herself and sits up abruptly. Frankie’s eyes go wide and she scoots back a little. No part of Grace looks ashamed now, only aroused and pissed off. A lethal combination.

“That kind of went by the wayside when I asked you to put your hands on me and you started rubbing my clit, don’t you think? We’ve been dancing around this for years,” Grace says raspily, looking Frankie up and down.

Who the fuck is this person? Frankie’s has had it, absolutely had it. Holding back, holding in, all of it can go right out the window. Hell, Teddie could even walk in right this second and she wouldn’t give one flying flip because this is Grace saying all of this, the one throwing caution to the wind and slapping Frankie with pure honesty.

Yeah, they’ve danced around it. Both have played it close to the vest and while they’ve been there for one another in the worst of times, they’ve also pushed one another away in the best of times. Santa Fe is still too fresh, Sheree something they’ve gotten past but it remains a painful sting.

“Let's help each other out tonight,” Grace continues, bringing her hand to Frankie’s hip but stopping, silently asking permission. Hesitation stomps and Grace looks like she’s tripping on guilt now too, but even it isn’t as strong as the desire yanking on her. “Frankie, don’t over analyze this. Just do this with me, please. I can’t be the only one floundering for control here.”

Grace’s eyes are closed, she licks her lips, and shudders. In a flying scramble of fabric, Frankie’s pants are on the floor and she’s leaned back against the pillow, staring at Grace’s body. Her hand that had been on Grace travels to meet her own form and yeah, just as she thought. The woman across from her has wound her up so much, she’s practically ready to go.

Gasping, Grace watches Frankie touch herself too. She has a look of mesmerization on her face and perhaps for that reason, Frankie amps up her performance a little by letting small pants escape her and her breath come out in tiny puffs.

“Don’t get me wrong, your bottom half is a freakin’ work of art, but I’d be lying if I said I never imagined what both of your breasts looked like, free and out there,” Frankie tries, if honesty is the best policy for tonight.

Without a word, Grace unbuttons her top and lays down on her own pillow. She parts the material and rests it on the sides of her body. Simply put, she’s beautiful there too. Time and gravity have done their due, sure, but her areolas are rosy pink and the nipples peaked. Her breasts are not large, but not small either. Frankie begins to wonder what they would feel like in…

“Man, I’d give anything to get at those,” she says reverently. “You’re amazing, Grace, from head to toe.”

She’s watching as Grace now plays it up a little, caresses her chest and runs a finger around her nipple, making it impossibly harder. Her other hand stays connected to her lower half, winding herself up again. She never takes her eyes off of Frankie who can feel the impact on her body at watching Grace.

“Maybe next time, I’ll let you touch them. If you still want to.”

“I’m never going to stop wanting to. In fact, I want to do a lot of things to you.”

Grace deposits her fingers back into herself, rubs while watching Frankie circle and press against her own body. The room temperature has catapulted a few thousand degrees it feels like, and Frankie’s throat feels scratchy, like it would catch the moan she wants to let loose.

“Tell me what they are,” Grace gets out, but using a lot of effort.

Spiraling completely out of control, Frankie doesn’t even think about it, doesn’t second guess what could happen if she lets the truth touch the open space.

“Your long legs. I...I’d like to kiss all along them, trace my fingers up and down. Show you how absolutely wonderful you are. I wasn’t joking when I said you were a striking woman.”

“Keep going.”

“I’d make my way from your ankles, up slowly. So slow. You’d be wondering how long it was going to take me to get where you wanted me most. Am I right?”

No answer verbally, like Grace’s body is incapable of it. Instead, she glances over at Frankie, at what she is doing to herself and only nods, biting her lip.

“Please, talk to me too. I need you to. Tell me I’m not the only one that has spent time thinking about what I’d like to do to you.”

“I’ve got my fingers inside myself while I’m watching you touch yourself. My breasts are bared. Isn’t it pretty obvious I’ve thought about you like this?”

“How long?”

“Every damn day for the last two years. Ever since you told me I didn’t know how to be unconditional,” Grace’s voice catches. “But I could be with you. I know it.”

Frankie doesn’t know which emotional rollercoaster she’s supposed to ride: the heartstring tugging one or the sexually vibrant one. There’s so much going on, from watching Grace touch herself, to touching her own body, to Grace melting her. It’s sensory overload.

Maybe it’s all that that sends Frankie to the edge, makes the end stalk quickly to plant its vice grip on her. She isn’t supposed to be the first one, wasn’t even supposed to be doing this in the first place. This was supposed to be Grace’s show.

“Ah, I can’t. I can’t keep this up anymore,” Frankie admits. It’s funny how a sentence can have multiple meanings, like the one she’s just spoken. _This orgasm is going to hit pretty soon_ or _I can’t continue to watch you and not think about it for the rest of my life._

“Keep going, Frankie. Don’t stop, please. Show me. I want to see you when you do,” Grace requests.

Not like she’d ever intended to begin with. Her eyes close as the crescendo begins, too much to bear with eyes wide open.

“If you’re there, open your eyes. Look at me when you come. I need that,” Grace pants.

“Holy shit, Grace,” Frankie says opening her eyes and bringing them to meet Grace’s. And just like that, she’s climaxing. It’s deep and rolling, like being covered in waves.

“Frankie, oh my God.”

It seems wrong to bring up Him in this whole scenario but even she understands the pure, raw sensations. It’s enough to make one cry out eternally. Although considering Grace’s past, she’s sure that self-chastisement and racking remorse will come.

Frankie, on the other hand, has a lot of Gods she’s familiar with, so at least one of them has to be okay with what’s going down. And even if they aren’t, it’s too late and she’s about three shades of blissed out as she waits for Grace to get there.

The only time she’s touched Grace was at the beginning of this experience. Not touching and kissing at the parts of Grace on display seems like a waste, but she’s tried to play by the script. The frustratingly, annoyingly present paradigm. It seemed like an unspoken rule: _hands are okay here if I ask for them, but don’t test it any more than this._

It could be adrenaline leeching away, the come down from coming seeping out like a puddle onto the sheets. It could be the fact that Grace still has her hands on herself and in. It could be that Frankie is utterly lost and has no idea what to do. For a plethora of reasons, eventually, she looks for guidance.

“Tell me what to do,” she rasps to Grace, a broken voice for breaking patience. “Tell me how to get you there.”

“Can you kiss me? Along my neck and shoulders. I…” she falters a bit. “I like that a lot.”

Frankie dives.

There’s no wading or testing the water. She makes her lips slick and tastes Grace for the first time. There’s a layer of sweat, yes, salty and tart on her tongue. Below it though, floral. Like lying in a bed full of blooms. Drowning in them. She makes work of Grace’s neck and tries not to moan from it all, much like the small, desperate ones that sometimes fall out of Grace as Frankie moves along.

“You’ve got to stay quiet…” Frankie pleads between moving. _Teddie_ lies unspoken but understood.

“It’s just hard with your mouth on me, doing that. And I’m...so close,” Grace stammers.

Everything is wrecked, all of it a mess.

Peering down Grace’s body when she can spare a look, Frankie sees her on glorious display. Her fingers wriggle with latent energy to touch, to rake them across those nipples and stomach and again, her thighs.

Frantic motions are pouring forth from Grace now and before Frankie has the sense to understand, a wail erupts from Grace and Frankie has to catapult up to cover her mouth as she gives her body over to its due. Grace bites into Frankie’s hand as she breathes the moan into her skin and if Frankie’s memory wasn’t spotty on occasion, she’d have remembered that Grace is like this. That she’s heard this sound, only louder, a night many moons ago while Grace was upstairs giving herself a thrill.

 _You perfect fucking human_ , Frankie has time to think before Grace undoes her teeth clamped on her hand. Her chest rises and falls in a labored manner, exertion claiming her limbs. Her eyes are closed and she lets out small puffs of air, trying to come back to herself. Frankie only hopes she likes who she is when she does, this new version of herself to contend with. The one that fucks herself in front of her best friend who hasn’t opened her mouth in the last six months to tell her she has wanted to do this too.

“Frankie,” Grace breathes, and Frankie feels her heart tighten with apprehension. What’s going to follow this uttering? Is she going to be thrown off and banished to the couch in another room? Blue eyes open, shine in the faint light cast in from the streetlights. San Diego sounds out there, reminding them it’s alive and breathing, just like they are.

“Grace,” Frankie whispers, in wonderment. With a surge, she loses any ability to speak further. Grace’s lips rake and nudge, finally sealing. Frankie touches her now, lacing her fingers in Grace’s hair.

When she rolls Grace to be on top, she lets herself begin to explore. Outside, all around, life pulses infinitely.  


	3. Resignation

There’s a pillow glued to her face and she’s sure it’s mid-afternoon because the light coming in from the window feels sweltering.

Bolting upright, Frankie grabs at herself, handfuls of T-shirt entering her fists. Glancing farther down, she sees the cotton pajama bottoms still in place. A pang shoots through her and she isn’t sure if she should ascribe it to relief or disappointment. A hazy part of her brain screams a latent thought, too hard to discern from dream or memory.

She’s working through the distinction when she whips around again to face the bed and realizes, in her frenzy, what she’s failed to focus on: Grace is missing.

“Fucking hell,” she mutters, knowing immediately that everything’s a memory. Before she can think better of anything, her hand is flying back from the doorknob and her body is being pressed up against Grace’s.

“Shh,” Grace hisses and closes the door behind her. “I heard you rustling around in here and knew you’d finally woken up.”

“What time is it?” Frankie asks, confused, amped up, and freaking terrified of this now morning after.

“It’s only 7. Teddie has a class at 8 and is getting ready to leave. Told me she’ll be back later,” Grace explains, puts a hand on Frankie’s skittish form at the shoulder. Lets her fingers curl with nothing other than intention.

“Then why does it feel like I woke up on the surface of the sun?” Frankie nervously laughs and backs away.

A look flits across Grace’s visage as she crosses her arms, one Frankie can read like a book. Knows that Grace knows exactly what she’s doing. Back peddling.

“Frankie…”

“You kissed me,” Frankie lets out, rather dumbly.

“Be quiet! And, well, yes. Plus a little more than that,” Grace says softly, taking her lip between her teeth.

“We mastur…” is the croak that Frankie gets out before Grace is covering her mouth again, but with a hand this time.

Frankie meets her eyes and immediately flashes back to her own palm stifling the sound from Grace as she bit into her skin, begging the noise to dissipate. Adrenaline flares, the hot one that tends to wiggle its way between people’s thighs, and she can’t help but moan into Grace’s hand.

“Please don’t do that,” Grace pleads, her own resolve cracking and pain evident in her tone. “Don’t do that if you don’t want me touching myself in front of you again.” The last part is barely audible, so worn and frayed in its deliverance that Frankie is hardly left with anything after it’s said.

Grace moves her hand away finally and Frankie expels what’s been itching to be let free. “I’d hope you let me.”

It might be embarrassing to say, in a world where she hadn’t seen Grace’s smooth, naked legs. Touched what was between them. Now it stands as only another truth in a long line of confessions waiting to be spoken against sweat and skin and moans.

Grace steps forward again after having backed away. She enters Frankie’s personal sphere, one she isn’t sure she ever wants to occupy without Grace again. “So we’re talking about this,” she nods, let’s her long fingers brush a flurry of hair behind Frankie.

 _That hand_ , Frankie all but squeaks. “How can I not?” Comes out instead. “When I’ve spent the last five minutes and all damn night fighting with myself not to want it again. I’d even halfway convinced myself that it was a dream, but then Joanna started that internal monologue and I couldn’t help but…”

Frankie stops when she sees Grace listening to her. Not the fake kind that she’s usually feigning, but honest to Gods listening.

“It wasn’t a dream. It was real and honestly, I’m not sorry for a second it isn’t.  Wondering what you feel like and the sounds you’d make when…” Now it’s Grace’s turn to trail off in the midst of her thought, her face holding anguish in the not finishing of it, but something sweet inside of its remembrance too. She wraps her fingers around the edges of Frankie’s hip then, runs the others along her face. “What do we do now? Where do we go from here?”

She’s a breath away, one Frankie could easily give up for the sake of feeling Grace’s lips on hers again. That winding staircase isn’t one she can descend down into yet.

“Teddie leaves soon. I’ve got an errand to run,” her lips twitch. “What I’m trying to say is I should be back before she gets home from her last evening class. We can continue this talk then.”

She scans Grace’s eyes for any recognition that she’s a shit liar and that she’s got a standing date with the enemy. What it also boils down to is that she is a stroke risk unfortunately and she’s not sure she can muster it in her body to not completely shut down if she has another orgasm in the span of eight hours. There’s recoup time to think about, no matter how much the beating low in her body is telling her to ignore rationale.

Grace nods then, looks down between their bodies in a way that makes Frankie ache with the thought of possibility. “Later then,” she nods and backs away. Removes all the parts of herself from Frankie’s sphere of being.

Frankie manages to get herself together after Grace exits and then she’s out the door and in the sun, feeling like it’s illuminating everything she’s done and wants. Practically feels like it’s plastered across her face when Coyote picks her up at the bus stop down the road with a questioning look on his naive face.

“I’m still mad at you. So don’t think for one fucking second you’re clear. But I had to get the fuck outta there,” Frankie holds up a finger as she gets into the car. Mallory’s, not Lydia’s. She wonders then how her youngest son will manage without Grace’s youngest, their weirdly nonsexual codependent relationship coming to a halt. She leaves it alone, in favor of not talking about her own weirdly codependent, now somewhat sexual relationship with Grace.

“Where? Are you staying around here? I know you said you were alright, but I really don’t like this. You’re too…” he stops when she glares the skin almost off his face. “...too stubborn sometimes. And Bud and I talked. We’re really sorry about the home and the beach house and we want to make things better.”

“How?” she spits out a little too forcefully, then sees the look on his face and waves the question off. The _too old_ he didn’t say stays lodged though. “Let’s just move on. Exciting things are happening. New beginnings. You mentioned packing, although I’m wondering how much of that there is for one to do when they live in a shoe. But you asked and I’m thinking that’s code for some heavier lifting that needs to be done,” Frankie swipes. Her own potentially new beginning tickles her senses and heart. She tries to slap it away.

If Coyote notices her weirdness, he doesn’t let on and they fall into the comfortable pattern of themselves for the rest of the day. Before she knows it, a few hours have passed and they’re sitting at a staggered angle on the sort of front porch of his tiny house, eating corner store sandwiches out of plastic containers. She glances up from her now three kinds of cheese mashup (she always steals Coyote’s. He always lets her) to see her son staring off in the distance.

“Penny for your thoughts?” she smiles up at him, wants to caress the lines appearing on his skin with each passing year. Midlife beating down upon him, her flirting back to her own half-life years before. She might feel a pang if her close to end life wasn’t making her head spin. _Grace._

“I’ll miss this, you know? I know I won’t be far away, but it will feel like it. Not as far as…” he stops again, clearly doing a bad job at hiding what he wants to say again. _Santa Fe_. “...other places. But far enough to where we can’t do yoga or hunt down the Original Herbivore and order Mediterranean wraps or…”

“This is becoming a lot of ‘or’s,’ my baby bird.”

“The point I’m trying to make, Mom, is that I’m going to miss you. I’ll have Nadia, sure, but I still value our time.” He pulls her in for a tight hug. “Thank goodness you have Grace.”

Frankie stiffens. Why does everyone have to compare their romantic partners to Grace in her life?

 _Oh, right. Because I just got done fingering her along with_ _myself last night_ , Frankie thinks with indignation and slight embarrassment. She wonders if Coyote can read her like a book. He backs away and she studies his face, eyebrows knitted together and eyes full of concern. Oh shit.

“Why did it feel like I was hugging a tree trunk?” he asks. “Not that trees don’t need our affection too. But you’re not as squishy as usual.”

She pats his cheek and wonders how much she should say. Obviously nothing close to the whole narrative but perhaps an abridged version of the truth. With a deep sigh, she begins.

“Even though you and I are speaking as of about an hour ago, I’m still super cheesed at Bud for a number of reasons, not just the home. And even though Grace is pretty incapable of mustering anything outside of stoic indifference or outright annoyance at my presence, I’m finding it’s bothering me a lot more lately than normal. We’ve been through a lot of shit. She feels like the one person who hasn’t given up on me, you know?”

She watches as Coyote looks down to his feet, forehead furrowed and thoughts turned inward. Gods love him. He does exactly what others say, gives in to peer pressure and undoubtedly caved to the Type A personalities amongst her and Grace’s brood.

“What’s the old saying again? ‘This too shall pass?’ Maybe everything will work itself out again,” Frankie suggests. This could cover beach houses and children and roommates turned friends with benefits. She lets Coyote take it as he will. “Anyway, I need to be getting back. Lots going on. Busy, busy, busy.”

Before she can start back to Mallory’s car, Coyote rests a hand gently on her shoulder. “I know you’re mad at me and Bud. And I get it. You have a right to be. But I worry about you, Mom. When they brought up the idea, I couldn’t say no. And you’d be there with Grace. She seems to be the only one you listen to.”

This stops her.

She’s pretty sure she’s been bucking Grace at every turn but if her children are thinking she’s going along with what Grace says, with her wishes…

“Now hold it right there. I do not.”

“Whoa, it’s okay. I mean…” Coyote trails off, clearly trying to dodge verbal land mines.

“FYI to you and everyone else. I do my own thing. I don’t let Grace Hanson dictate my biz. I make her mine, not the other way around.”

He seems hesitant to go on but she can see him make the decision to press on, albeit carefully.

“It’s just when Bud and I talked, he was so sure you wouldn’t go anywhere without her. He said you came back from Santa Fe for her. Is that true?” He makes a sheepish face when he asks the question.

They’re skimming too close to a place Frankie herself is just beginning to understand. If her kids had been able to tell Grace was the determining factor of keeping a foot in New Mexico or rejoining La Jolla life, what else are they picking up? It seems out of bounds to deny something he already has settled on, so she doesn’t.

“Turns out I missed the nagging and drunken tirades,” Frankie shrugs.

“It’s okay for you to say, Mom. You missed her. Probably how I would feel if I weren’t following Lydia,” he smiles.

“Yeah,” she nods, sighs. She doesn’t try to correct him, to state the comparison is off. That’s when it hits her: she’s been agreeing with it all along.

***************

Teddie’s still gone, driving statistics into a bunch of unfortunate post-pubescent college kids, so Frankie doesn’t even try to tone down the noise she makes as she bursts through the door. Glancing around frantically, she doesn’t see Grace immediately and begins to panic before she sees her figure walk through to the living room.

“I’ve had a revelation, an epiphany, a vision, a…” Frankie stops. “Another synonym for all of those words. Come on, Grace. You’re a walking thesaurus. Give me one.”

“What on earth is all this about?” Grace asks and crosses her arms. She stays a safe distance away, not making her way closer. Has she had her own misgivings while Frankie has been missing? Surely not…

“Hmm, so you’re not playing the similar terms game.”

“Insight, realization, discovery! Now what is going on?” she says, exasperated and Frankie takes this moment to drag her closer and down onto Teddie’s couch. Just touching her sends Frankie’s blood pressure steadily higher and really, this shit isn’t fair at their age since high blood pressure could kill them. _She’s going to be the death of me…_

“I’ve figured out why people always compare you and me to their mates, their equals.” Frankie doesn’t give Grace time to guess, just lets it all out. “It’s because I give them a reason to.” A nod for finality, like she’s explained everything.

Only Grace’s face couldn’t be more confused. “I’m trying to follow and all I’m doing is getting more lost,” she grumbles. Frankie knows from the bite to her cheek, she's lying. She knows exactly what Frankie is talking about but is avoiding it.

“Those times at the Food Giant and with Officer Torres. Even the times when no one is around and I ask you if you want me to do stuff to you or say you’re a striking woman or that it’s not that you can’t, it’s that you won’t. I’ve been playing it all off as a funny joke,” she stops, looks at Grace. “Maybe it’s not.”

Grace says nothing, leans in instead. Frankie watches her body moving through the air until points of touch radiate all along her own: a faint sensation to her elbow, a hint of her hand grazing Frankie’s hip as it rests on the couch beside, aching to be something other than idle. When she covers Frankie’s mouth with her own, it’s like finding a comfortable shoe lost long ago.  

Has it only been a day since this happened last? Since so much more transpired between them?

Frankie lets Grace kiss her in a temporary house in a temporary situation and hopes that what they’re doing right now, Grace’s mouth moving softly over her own, isn’t as short-lived as all the unanswered things in their life.

There’s something waiting down the pike, but Frankie knows not what. Maybe it’s apartments with old decor to fill a new life or finding lost and dark paths to familiar stomping grounds with blank potential to remake the old. Whatever’s coming, whatever life they end up with-Frankie knows it will never be the same again.

When Grace’s body scoots closer, deepening everything, Frankie longs to keep her this way. To trek, like this, into whatever’s waiting. She lets her hand glide along the curve of Grace’s face, let's skin intermingle with the blonde strands on her beautiful head.

Teddie’s due home any minute, she knows, and the thrill of doing this in view of the doorway sends a mischievous grin to tug at the corners of her mouth. After a few moments, she makes herself pull away. Now, all breath and blood and touch, Frankie looks at Grace to see if she’s wrecked too-a nerve ending left to operate like it knows what it’s supposed to do.


	4. Justification

Days pass. 

On an afternoon filled with not much of anything, (no more secrets on other people’s couches or beds-a truth that makes her heart ache with memory) she finds her Leaf has taken them to the front of their old abode. 

They sit in silence, staring at the deep brown wooden squares of the exterior, the crisp white and welcoming windows of the top floor.  _ Grace’s space _ , she thinks. Wonders if Grace doesn’t think the same, feeling it hit her deep that maybe her name cannot be attached to the area anymore. 

It’s almost too painful, like sitting inside of a nightmare that’s inescapable. Her mind begins to lurch with thoughts. About who would buy a carcass and burrow themselves in the unfinished. They’ve probably got oodles of time to make it what they wish and while she’s never minded being her age, the years washing and lapping over her skin. Frankie feels the pang of them now. Too many to fix the too much of what’s in front of them right now. 

The thought shatters and withers when she’s watching Grace round the front of the car and pop the gate open like a charm. Suspended somewhere in time, she only becomes aware she hasn’t moved when she sees Grace motion for her. Her face shows surprise she hasn’t followed along yet.

Frankie barrels from the car with more pep in her step that her body should afford. Even though her joints are supple, it’s been a few years since she made that declaration and as much as she’d like it, nothing is the same. She huffs a little as she comes to rest beside Grace. 

“Breaking and entering again?” She manages to smile. “I like this new side of you.” The Grace staring back initiates wild shit, allows it to happen, seeks it out.

“Jennifer Nightengale and Carol Carothers coming in for round two,” Grace smiles as they walk through the gate and down the steps to their home. 

The windows are dark, only the natural light doing anything to cast sight on the interior. She’s peering into the windows of the kitchen when she feels Grace’s body pressed against hers. This is all so new still, her wanting to be close, that Frankie tries to steady her respiration. She fights the urge not to lean back and rest her head against Grace’s. 

“What now?” Frankie asks, close to something familiar and good but standing on the outside breaking in.

“I was almost going to say this is one of those times I wish I’d taken you up on getting a pet,” Grace sighs. Even if she did cram herself through a doggy door with a bad knee, one such luxury could come in handy right about now. “But thankfully, I’ve got the memory of an elephant and you can’t even remember what time Ray Donovan comes on even though you’ve watched it for three years now, so that also means you forgot you’d stuffed a spare key into the shrubbery right here.”

She points to the left of the door and Frankie makes a wry face. “Or maybe I’m just trying to get you used to the idea of reaching into bushes,” she says with a waggle of her eyebrows. 

Grace barks out a scoffing laugh, but then smiles and reaches to move aside the foliage. After a few seconds of combing, she holds up her find and turns the key in the white double doors. Thank the gods these amateurs haven’t changed the locks yet. 

Swinging open with ease, they both look apprehensively to the inside. Expecting wreckage, they’re met with smooth walls and non-dusty floors. Sheetrock has been applied and the frame of it no longer gutted to show copper pipes missing. It’s a shell waiting to be filled again.

It’s deeply quiet when Frankie shuffles past Grace into the house. It’s the second time they’ve broken into a house together but this time, it’s their own. 

Or was. 

It belongs to someone else, for now, the bitter truth of it cooling around her heart in anguish. Ghosting whispers remind her of the life they left behind here, the one they could have again. It seems like it’s too much to hope for but something settles. 

“I’m not leaving again,” Frankie speaks into the quiet. 

Grace is near her now, close but untouching. As much as she wants her to reach out, tell her she understands, that she isn’t crazy, she doesn’t fuse them together. Her lips make a line, her jaw set against a thought pushing hard. 

Grace has done a lot of illegal shit in her life, mostly involving a fifth of vodka and keys, but when she starts letting her fingers tap against the glass screen of her phone acting like she can reclaim what’s been theirs, Frankie feels her heart grow three sizes. Like there can be more depth to what she already feels.

Before she knows it, there’s a whole lot of shit happening, most of it beyond what she can even imagine and pretty freakin’ rad if she does say so herself. 

Both of their exes prove to be more useful than they have been in twenty years. With a few quickly pecked out sentences from Grace and a big metaphorical ‘cease and desist’ to every money-grubbing hack trying to give them an express ticket back to whence they came, Frankie finally allows herself to breathe quietly again.

Order takes time, but they’ve got the beginnings of the life that brought them together. As much as Frankie feels the tickle of longing to gather bits of what’s transpired at Teddie’s, the recollection of the beach house shifts the emotion underfoot like the sand some 150 yards away. 

Two mattresses line the floor now. Other markers of habitation begin to exist too, reclamation theirs. The sun tracks overhead and the moon rises. The days tick by. They watch their old world take on shape again around them. 

It’s not so different though that Frankie can forget the woven fabric of their lives, the way things were and have been and have the potential to be. It’s nice to be here again, inside the walls that partially made them who they are (Teddie’s, oddly, another facet of their makeup too)

They can change everything, the walls, the floors, the decor, but what makes the beach house theirs is that they’ve now had to start over twice here, and that’s got to be a fucking record for people their ages. It’s got to mean something. 

That’s why she can’t much care how long it takes to get the house up and going again because she gets to fall asleep with Grace close by her side again. It’s regaining a sweet thing that has only been a memory lately.

One night, they might tell a story to lead the other off into the Land of Nod. Another night, the silence is something Frankie learns to give. She knows that Grace is next to her awake a lot of the time, just like so many other nights because at this age, falling asleep is a sort of a heavy, ordinary thing.

The squatting actually works relatively well if Frankie says so herself and even though things are still less together than before Walden Villas, they’re more together than they have been in months and at least the two of them are together.

So when it’s another quiet night and Grace comes to her, she goes from groggy to wide awake in seconds. The press of Grace’s body into hers is enough to lumber everything awake at breakneck speed. Looking up, Frankie asks the question with her eyes but already knows the answer, has been fighting with it since Teddie’s. She’s mildly aware of her palms gripping handfuls of the sheet at her sides.

“Please, don’t tell me no,” Grace all but begs and Frankie wants to tell her she never had any resolve to begin with, that Grace was never going to hear anything to the contrary.

Before initiation, she has a wonderful second to appreciate waking up to Grace on top of her. When Frankie pulls Grace’s hand closer, weaves it under her bed clothing, it sends Grace’s face into her neck and breath expelled onto her skin. That gasp is a life force, a thing so powerful on its own that Frankie isn’t sure she can take much more of what’s next. 

Before this (because there is most definitely a this) gets started, she feels a clawing need outside of the one her own libido is dictating, the one that needs to tell Grace what’s been lacking. 

“I’ve missed you,” Frankie admits, Teddie’s house something beautiful but far away now. It’s all been too safe, too fucking heavy, and this is the moment for all that transpired to finally mean everything. 

“You’ve got me,” Grace sighs and then rest is lost to the spirits of the house because then she carves indentions into the matter of Frankie’s ribs, traces the curve of them like they are just as precious as the other places she’s already been. 

Frankie would like to say she remembers Grace with startling clarity, but that would be giving her more credit than she’s due. The image forever seared in her mind, she finds she does recall some of the finer details of Grace’s body but finds new ones as well. 

It starts when she plants her hands beside herself, pushing up and into Grace’s pressing form. She doesn’t let her move from her perch lightly above her. Her soft brown sweater she wore that first night, now yesterday and forever ago at the same time, curls around her body and envelopes it. Frankie wraps her fingers in the layered collar, brushes the skin of Grace’s neck with her fingers which causes a following sigh, and sends them slowly south. 

Her white pajamas are crisp, freshly laundered. They’re as Grace as everything else she owns, sleek even in slumber. Frankie feels the need to be bold, doesn’t ask permission as her fingers circle the top button, grazing Grace’s neck again. Other sounds—sighs, pants, puffs—they’re all an effect of connecting.

Frankie supposes Grace has had a lifetime of silent sex, so that’s why she’s making noise now. Like is too big and too much to hold in. As if all the things she wanted to say and the sounds she wanted to make got stuffed down or shoved aside for someone who never bothered to ask what she wanted or if her need could be given adjectives and actions to back them.

“I think it’s time I felt your skin,” Frankie whispers into the night. 

It’s this that Frankie thinks about with Grace’s hand on her own skin, resting, as Frankie lets hers nudge her pajama top up and connect. A gasp, then a shuddered sigh from Grace’s lips leaves Frankie wondering what other noises she can tease into the air, what she can unfurl. 

“I’ve wanted you to touch me every blasted second since that night at Teddie’s house,” Grace let’s out but then hides her face in Frankie’s hair like she’s embarrassed she couldn’t hold that in either. 

“Honey…”

“I was so afraid after what we did, that you’d never, couldn’t ever—“

Frankie could say when she’s into it with someone-okay,  _ in love _ -that she’s a one and done gal. She could tell Grace that she’s pretty much been in it for the last four years even though it took her mind longer to catch up with her heart. 

She doesn’t say that though. She’s tired of the ground being unsteady underneath her feet. There’s Grace up there and pliable underneath her fingers which now feel like they’ve been all the safe places they’re comfortable with. They itch for the more dangerous.

Grace stares as Frankie works her fingers to unbutton the white fabric, parts it revealing nothing underneath and she should have known,  _ damn _ , she should have. But there Grace is and it’s been far too long, far too many days since Frankie caught a glimpse of her. 

This time, she gets to learn them, learn her properly. Grace’s nipples peak, the bud of them rising to attention before Frankie even lays a finger on her. Giddiness flares, deep, and she can hardly keep her hands from running along the plump swell of Grace’s breasts. She has to will herself to slow down, to calm her jumpy digits. 

“You can touch me. Them. Me,” Grace says quietly and quickly, a break between her words. 

Frankie can tell she’s nervous, not like at Teddie’s because that was about secrets and discovery and adrenaline. Now, there’s no question about what could happen, what she wants. She’s already told Frankie, applied her body to Frankie’s on more than a whim. 

Her brain is good at misfiring, so instead of delicately touching Grace, she doesn’t sugarcoat anything. With her eyes glued to the shining blues of Grace’s, she leans in and takes the pebbled peak into her mouth. 

Of course Grace moans loudly and of course she tastes good and of course, of course,  _ of course, _ because isn’t this  _ exactly _ what Frankie has woken herself up from doing in another bent dimension of consciousness?

Her tongue moves and she doesn‘t do it lightly, doesn’t go easy. She wants Grace’s body to remember her and to ache with memory. Whatever restraint she has is gone and Frankie winds her arms around Grace’s hips to bring her closer, to take more of her into her mouth. 

Grace is grinding now, chasing, and it’s a race neither of them should want. They’ve been put in a home for goodness sake and can’t even get cashiers to get them fucking cigarettes. Everyone else has written them off and yet here they both are, clinging to one another at this endpoint of their life.

_ I ain’t dead yet _ , swirls through Frankie and gives her purpose. So Grace wants to make noises, to let loose sounds for their walls to trap forever? Frankie can add to that too then. She can make sure neither of them ever have to be quiet again, that they’re not forever silenced and they can burn with sound.

Frankie brings her palm to the breast she’s not been paying attention to. Trails her eyes down past where she lets herself touch the waistband of Grace’s pajama bottoms. 

There, right below the barrier, Grace is. Maybe not the soul of Grace but an essence to her that Frankie can’t wait to experience. There’s time though, right? This isn’t their first sexual encounter, but Frankie can backtrack a little, can’t she? She can take her time to add the things that didn’t get accomplished before. 

Just as she ends the thought of it, she takes her right hand away from Grace’s hip while the other one stays in place. She holds her as she delicately runs the pads of her pointer and middle finger down Grace’s still covered center. A strangled cry pierces the air, bounces around, and then slides into the walls. 

“That’s it,” Frankie thinks but also says as she rests her head against Grace’s bare chest, presses against the valley there and closes her eyes, dragging a trail of her fingers up and down the white material. Below, unmistakable arousal, the faint dampening, and with every swipe of her fingers, Frankie knows she’s getting slick inside.  _ Nope, still alive and kicking.  _

“I…,” Grace let’s out, but that’s all she manages on one of Frankie’s swipes back up and then the rest is lost to a moan, head thrown back and sending her noises to the sky.

“Let go of all of those you have,” Frankie turns her face into Grace again, kisses her bare skin. Grace’s pajama pants are wrecked now because the faint dampening heat has turned to actual wet fabric. That propels Frankie onward. “If you’ve got a stockpile of them from the last forty years, I’ll take every single one you’ve got. I want to hear them, Grace.” 

She takes Frankie’s hand then, places it at the waistband and speaks as she shoves her hand underneath. The angle is complete trash, but it’s overload as she feels and listens. 

“Everyone always wanted me to be so quiet. With Robert, well, you already know that. Then...the rest. They all just took and took and took and hardly once did any of them ask me how I…”

Frankie pushes a curious finger barely inside of Grace then, rests it in the wetness, and glances at the small table placed between their mattresses on the floor. She knows it’s there, behind the salt lamp and jar of olives, another jar lying in wait without ever being placed there by herself. Grace is thorough if anything. 

“Let me just…” Frankie makes to reach for the bottom shelf, multitasking by wiggling her brown polka-dotted slipper socks off. Socks don’t belong in sex but lube does and if she can just reach a little farther…

“I don’t, I don’t need it,” Grace looks down. Stills Frankie a bit. Her eyes are wild, her chest heaving, and she smiles faintly. As if she’s afraid to be happy still. “If you…” she stops and then looks upward quickly. Back down. Like she’s deciding if she should say what comes next. “If you go into me. I don’t need it.” 

_ Proud _ . Frankie has been trying to peg the tone and now she gets it. She might have needed it in the past but maybe in the past, her gentlemen callers weren’t doing it for her. Maybe that’s why she sheepishly would ask Frankie every so often if there was any lube in the fridge. Maybe it’s why Frankie herself was eager to introduce Jacob to it too, because some part of her knew, just knew, that she couldn’t completely get there without its help. 

“We don’t need it,” Frankie says, stunned as she arrives to the realization. 

Grace, all noises and sounds, gasps again and looks incredulous. “You mean…?”

For someone so articulate, it also stuns Frankie that Grace hasn’t been able to form a complete sentence since she began touching her, her words all parts and fragments hitting Frankie’s ears. She grins fiercely and buries her face in Grace’s skin again. 

“Frankie,” Grace says. It comes out a statement, but Frankie knows she’s asking. 

“Your voice, your body, being close to me,” Frankie starts, and she knows she’s about to overshare again but she’s tired of being quiet too. “You’ve been having this effect on my body the last two years, probably even before that.” As she says it, she moves Grace’s hand to her own pajama-clad center and rests her palm between. Grace’s mouth parts in wonder.

“Since Jacob?” Grace asks and moves her hand against Frankie a little, enough to send a sensory jolt up through her, all along her spine and back down to curl her toes. The name should be cold water on a hot thought, but everything stays on fire. 

“Honestly? Since before him. I think him and I worked out so well because the whole time, I was transferring my lust to him and wanting you,” Frankie admits. She’s not new to shit like this, saying things that are piercingly honest. But she’s kept a lot hidden where Grace is concerned, out of fear, because even though everyone thinks she’s balls to the wall usually, she keeps a lot on the low key too. 

Grace rubs harder now, with more purpose, as if spurred on by the words. Frankie can’t keep her head upright, lets it fall back in sweet agony from what is happening below. 

“I never wanted Nick,” Grace admits too, and again, what should be cold water is anything but. “I’ve been chasing these men all of my life, but it’s not because of who they are. It’s because of what I thought I could get from them. Because I thought they held the key to what I was missing, to what my heart could be capable of.”

She grabs Frankie then tilts her chin up so that they’re looking into one another’s eyes. 

“Grace…”

“I’m beginning to think you’re what I’ve needed my entire fucking life. All those years I was ignoring you and pushing you away when I could have been touching you and lov…” she bites off the word and shakes her head.

“Say it.”

“What?”

“Say the word if you want,” Frankie commands. “Say what you feel.” Because she wants to hear it more than anything, so it can entwine with her own emotions. 

Grace goes into the black patterned pajama bottoms on Frankie’s lower half, seeks then finds. She drags a finger up and down, presses into Frankie, watches her shiver in response. 

“I think you feel better than anyone I’ve ever touched,” Grace breathes into Frankie’s hair. She stills then and her face washes over with a seriousness that permeates. “I love you, Frankie. I think...I think I’ve loved you since painted that awful fucking picture of me and I had to stare at it for two hours at your art show.”

It’s Frankie’s turn to exhale heavily. Has she really, all this time? Frankie grabs Grace’s pajama collar, adding it to where her beige sweater is. Her skin prickles, goosebumps everywhere. Even though she’s been bared to the air, she reacts like it’s new again. 

“All this time. The whole time,” Frankie says as she peppers Grace’s shoulders with kisses.  _ You’ve loved me all this time, I’ve loved you the whole time, I could have been doing this since then.  _ It could mean all of these things and more, but no matter. There’s now.

“Yes,” Grace hisses when Frankie kisses then inhales the scent of her skin.

“Your knees have to be killing you,” Frankie cobbles together enough sense to say, touches the outside of one with her hand and feels guilty for letting Grace stay above her with her weight pressed down solidly. It’s all just felt so damn good. 

“How should we then?” Grace’s hand still pressed tightly to Frankie below. 

She doesn’t want to move, wishes they could stay like they are, but she’s got the better joints for this.  _ Let me top you _ sounds indelicate, even if the thought of the words send a current connected to everything lovely down south. 

Despite the situation, she drifts off in the creative vocabulary she could use. Options on the how are limited though, so this has to be bare bones and stripped down. There’s no furniture to act as an aid, no way they can hold one another up or bend to contort their bodies like in the past. She’s got two ways to go about this and settling on one seems like a waste. 

“Lay down where I am,” Frankie finally says, let’s Grace move her half-covered body and switch their positions. Glancing down, her heart flutters.

It should be fucking cheesy, that they’re too old for this. Frankie feels like she’s playing the co-lead in a beautiful romance though, not just being sexed up. She wants Grace to feel the same, like she’s never been touched or looked at in the way Frankie can give her.

Another ridiculous thought arrives, that they’ve been created with grooves and edges that seem to connect just right. Puzzles, Frankie thinks, but then that would be romanticizing again, and things can’t be that easy. As if they were made for each other all along. 

Grace’s legs are a little thinner, hip bones a little more prominent. Her fingers are long and her breasts a bit bigger, but somehow each of these points creates a counterbalance on Frankie’s own body. 

She lets Grace unbutton the floral print and push the fabric back with her fingertips as she touches her for the first time. Her body, thankfully, responds and even though she knew it probably would, being their age leads to a fickleness of the body occasionally. Frankie feels young again as her nipples pebble from Grace’s brushing thumbs.

“I’m going to make you come again,” she hears below and she’d like to scoff at that because Grace must not realize she’s at a disadvantage here, Frankie topping her. 

She forgets it though as a thumb ghost across the flower garden of her pants now. Below that, a patch waiting to be tended, remembered. Moisture growing after a period of drought. Grace, the gardener of a supposedly distant past, making old somewhat young again in the work of her hands.

Grace curls those long fingers under the band and dips them lower, languidly pulling aside undergarments while her eyes are burning and bare chest heaving. After a few passes, merely whispering touches, she removes her hand and lets Frankie lift slightly to settle her clothing midway down her thighs and almost to her knees before she stops her. Frankie wants to ask what she’s doing, but then Grace weaves her hand lower and then she’s against. It’s like she’s bound a little, friction being created by what she hasn’t been allowed to move, what’s keeping her from spreading.

“Oh, ah,” Frankie gasps out, Grace’s touch seeking. It’s not far from unintelligible grunting, but she figures that’s on the brink because now that seeking touch is learning her slopes and curves and it’s all she can do not to mutter out profanities on end. 

“Can I touch you how I want?” Frankie hears and she whimpers her agreement, a weirdly almost staccato sound. Then Grace's hand dips again and it’s all she can do not to puncture a hole into her lip from biting down so hard. 

_ Nice _ is too simple a word for what’s happening and for a woman like Grace. And really, words can’t construct the touches and motions and feelings pummeling her body. It’s all velvet skin, fingers, and slickness and the reality that, not so long ago, she couldn’t even stand the woman touching her isn’t too far removed either.

Frankie has seen the progression of Grace to the person willing to do things like bringing herself to orgasm in front of her, how she arches her back heavenward and digs her heels into cool cotton sheets on hot nights in practically stranger’s houses. 

A vision surfaces then breaks in Frankie’s mind with every stroke of Grace’s fingers. Becomes more pronounced as she beckons Frankie from within to arrive at orgasm. 

It’s the picture of Frankie finding a home between Grace’s legs, the rising mountains of her thighs on either side, of the hopeful river at the junction of the peaks. Frankie can imagine her tongue drinking, of tasting Grace for the first time even though her risqué brain has already done the deed a hundred times. 

“What are you thinking about?” Grace asks with a flick of her fingers. It’s not a sexy question in and of itself, but given the path her mind has been wandering, she’s sure it coats Grace’s fingers a little more. 

“Tasting you, finally,” Frankie sighs and Grace gasps at the admission. It’s easy to know what comes next. It’s her. It has to be. 

Five years of building, of growing, of losing and coming together again. Was there really any other way this could have gone? Grace was always going to be the end in her.

She showed up in Frankie’s life at the end of pigtails and the almost beginning of Sol, high cheekbones and sass for miles. So untouchable back then, a painting on a wall that looks beautiful but that everyone knows is dangerous to touch. The second Grace had raked her hands with those delicate fingers (touching and pushing softly now) along the expanse of Frankie’s arm, she was a goner. 

A strangled cry pours forth, a gasp from below. Grace ends her again and she wants to weep from happiness. Her body exerts the force of being spent, relaxes and pulses again. Lips are on her throat as she feels Grace’s hand leave the recesses of her clothing. She’s a wreck, a hollowed-out shell. It pulls her under. 

Somewhere deeper in the night, she jolts awake, heart beating wildly, but calms when her nails lightly scrape across the smooth exterior of Grace’s chest. Her pajama top sits akimbo, navel bare to the room and ready for touch. Frankie dips the tip of her pointer into the indention of the plane of her stomach, traces the curve of it. 

Grace stirs. Her eyelids flicker, a dance of eyelashes sweeping away slumber but before they open, a smile pushes at the edges of her mouth. “Not that what you’re doing is annoying or anything, but I will admit it’s a little weird,” Grace hums through a haze of waking.

Frankie removes her fingers, replaces them with her mouth. Closed eyes move to open and Grace’s hands move to wildly tangle in Frankie’s mane. She hears her name spill out in a sigh. 

“I’m sorry,” she begins as an apology, supports it with a delicate kiss to Grace’s navel. “About earlier. I was worse than a guy, just taking what I need and then leaving you hanging.”

“I think you were snoring five seconds after you climaxed,” Grace halfheartedly teases. Frankie swipes in a circle and buries any other comments stacked and waiting.

She settles at Grace’s sides, pulls down the barrier of separation and then looks to alabaster thighs. “I’m old,” Frankie whispers against them. “Give me a chance to fix the things that need fixing.”

Her world needs an orgasming Grace, a life where she’s watched pleasure become a part of the body below her, knows what it looks like as it overtakes her face. Frankie no longer confines herself to the crater of Grace’s belly, marching her mouth downward.

A hitch above, writhing as the trek continues. Plane lowers into valley as Frankie feels Grace grip her hair with anticipatory nervousness. Her voice bubbles on the air right before Frankie lets her touch land. 

“I...Frankie,” Grace begins, sense lacking to her words just yet. Her chest heaves and she rises a little, looks down her own length at Frankie in between. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to…” 

She trails off again, falling back but keeping her hands in Frankie’s hair. Grace’s eyes are cast to the ceiling, wandering but not lost. Frankie grounds her by giving her rebuttal in the form of action. Up, down, around, and Grace sinks her hips. 

In the end, Frankie finds the staying power of yesteryear, a murmur of her old self among the clouded haze of older age. Broken and lost homes, transient lifestyle, and now repossession all fall to the limbo of their experiences this year. She wouldn’t call it the best, but as Grace lets a cry rip the air, Frankie decides that maybe it can be the most bittersweet. Losing only to make their way again. The path now leading to a greener other side.

*******************

Mornings after watching someone come tend to be charged with a certain amount of static energy. Especially when the beginning is so near, when nervousness and dialogue are lacking for the most part, unless you’re a post-sex yammerer, which Frankie decidedly is not. 

She had toyed with the idea of letting her skin stay fused with Grace’s until long past the sun was up but rose with the tell-tale sign of it nudging the horizon.

Her body still wears Grace’s in the best of memory as she slides on an article of clothing at a time. Just as her shirt flutters home and she gives a quick comb to her hair with her fingers, she hears her. All edge and honey at the same time. 

“Normally when I wake up with an ache between my thighs, I also come face to face with a snoring body,” Grace says with a quirk of her lips as Frankie comes to face her.

Errantly, Frankie darts her tongue across her own. Searching, inadvertently, for the tangy remnants of Grace left behind. Because, yeah, she went there. She did that. The that which is now staring at her like she doesn’t have a scrap of clothing on even though she just worked to resituate them back on her body. 

“Sorry,” Frankie offers and gazes out the window across the slatted expanse of the beach, past the gulls and waves to the distance where other lives are maybe twisting up as much as her own, irrevocably changed. 

“You’re running,” Grace says quietly, softly, disappointed. She rises, all glory and skin, but doesn’t touch Frankie who bites back a moan. She can’t do a round two right now even though she throbs below when Grace leans over and picks her pajama top off the floor.

“I think we both know the only time I do that is for Costco samples,” Frankie deflects. It even stings her to say, much less for Grace to hear it. Frankie gives Grace the privacy to dress without her watchful eyes, turning to face the doors.

“Don’t do this to me. Not now. Not after we’ve been through so much,” Grace pleads, voice angled to the right and head resting on the back of Frankie’s. It’s the sound of having things left to lose even though a lot has already been ripped away. 

And Frankie supposes she has a point. She’s already removed herself from Grace once, of her own volition, and then Grace was hard to find once she came to her senses and made her way back to La Jolla. Maybe it’s time to stop running.

Just as she’s about to say this, her chest starts vibrating and Grace pulls back as if shocked by the sound. She turns Frankie to face her and gives a smug look as she pulls the device from the inside of Frankie’s garment, glancing at the screen and just barely managing not to roll her eyes. She points then slides the answer bar, handing the phone over and walking off into the quiet of the house leaving Frankie spluttering against the ear and mouthpiece. 

“Um, yes? Hello.”

“Who is this?” the voice on the other end asks. It sounds like Teddie and the screen says Teddie, but Frankie can’t be sure these days, what with the Russian cyborg squirrels and Russian apps that steal faces and just Russians in general, so she takes to her usual game of dodge.

“See, I would love to tell you who I am, but I’m also pretty sure you already know my identity and have been taking copious notes, which, congrats you smelly hacker, I already know about. So tell your buds at the Kremlin ‘hi’,” Frankie says with a lot more gusto than she feels. She’d hate to have a Sputnik version 2k19 zero in on her every move and out her before she even has the chance…

She gasps at little at her internal thought and the noise on the other end of the line sighs in relief. 

“Oh, so it is you. Good to know,” possibly faux Teddie says.

“Tell me something only my sister would know,” Frankie practically yells into the speaker. Her voice cracks a little on the delivery. She needs to get her shit together quick…

“You left a note in the place I hid that filthy piece of junk known as your bong that said ‘You’re not the boss of me now.’ And a CD with ‘Boss of Me’ on it.” She pauses. “And the first season of Malcolm in the Middle.”

“We all know it launched Bryan Cranston’s career. But where in the world has Frankie Muniz been since then? I don’t think Dancing With the Stars counts.”

“As much as I’d love to indulge this flight of fancy, I was just calling to check up on you and your  _ friend _ ,” Teddie adds extra emphasis on the last word as a dig. 

Frankie supposes it’s fine, considering that one typically doesn’t bury their head between their “friend’s” legs. She feels a tingle between her own because, yeah, there is still a last night and now that it's day, it totally happened. No dreaming there. Maybe it’s best that Grace is somewhere in the house because with all the thoughts rushing forth, Frankie is pretty sure she could give her sister an earful even though she was playing stupidly hard to get about five minutes ago. 

“Everything’s peachy-keen,” Frankie says to clear her throat of other sounds it would like to make with Grace underneath her. “Settling in, getting things squared away.”

“And by squared away, you mean sleeping on a mattress on the floor while pigs make a zoo out of your living room?” She pauses and then tacks on “Someone named Kareena G at’d you on the Vybrant Twitter. Which I do follow, though it may be hard to believe.”

“My life works for me,” Frankie shoots back because a lot more has happened on those mattresses than pigs. 

“I know. And I’m really trying to be supportive,” Teddie begins, even as Frankie tries to stifle the list of things her sister has decidedly not supported (Sol, activism, adoption, Aqua Net hairspray in the 80s, balloon pants, bongs, edibles, vibrator businesses, Grace) “I just worry. We just got each other back. I’d hate to lose you over something ridiculous.”

“She isn’t ridiculous,” Frankie spits out, straightening her back. Yeah. YEAH.

“I beg your pardon?” 

“You absolutely may beg. Grace isn’t ridiculous and neither is my relationship with her. She may be rough around the edges and saturated with vodka and prescription drugs everywhere else, but she’s my person. And I wouldn’t take her any other way. So you can come off whatever high horse you’ve been riding for the last forty years because everyone knows the average life-span of a horse is about 27 years, so yours would most likely be dead.”

A sarcastic chortle hits her ears from the receiver. 

“ _ This _ is the hill you want to sit on? The one where you staunchly support Grace and fuck everyone and everything else?” 

“I’m pretty sure I made the hill, I’m sitting on it, and I’m defending it to the death,” Frankie agrees with her own mouth and willpower. It’s hella freeing to say out loud, some version of the almost truth. 

“Okay, then. Fine.”

Frankie stops pacing, hand gripping her phone a little harder. What the frick? 

“Um, so the cat isn’t necessarily out of the bag and anyone who’s someone knows I have hearing issues, but it didn’t sound like they were deceiving me when they heard you say ‘Okay.’ Feel free to correct me, as you usually, inevitably, do.”

“What’s to argue with? If you swear by her, I guess that’s all I need. It doesn’t stop me from worrying though,” Teddie sighs, like she’s having to shove the acceptance into herself even though she’s said she already has it.

By the time Frankie is disconnecting, she isn’t feeling much better than when the conversation began. Some convoluted emotions swirl and she wishes things could be simple again between the two of them. Shit aside, Teddie came through when no other options seemed available and she has to admit that means a good bit of something. 

When she goes into the kitchen, Grace is nowhere to be found. Just as she’s about to panic that she’s foolishly shoved and pushed until Grace has had enough, she spots the top of her blonde hair outside sitting beside the turquoise water of the pool. 

Making her way outside, she sits beside Grace. It’s been a while since they have had the chance to relax and be alone together in a way that doesn’t feel watched or second nature to a norm. There’s no one coming in, no one leaving. No interruptions are going to come, if instead, Frankie lays her head on Grace this time and tells her she’s glad they’ve made a home both inside of one another and outside of them together. 

“Last time we were doing this, I had left the perilous landscape of never-ending heat and snakes to rejoin the more agreeable maritime climate of La Jolla,” Frankie speaks a little into Grace’s shoulder. She drags a foot through the turquoise clear of their pool, watching the ripples radiate outward.

“Seems like forever ago,” Grace replies and leans in, resting her cheek against the top of Frankie’s head. 

“A lot’s gone down since then,” Frankie semi nods and then realizes her tongue in cheek phrasing. Lazily, the literal one in her mouth brushes first the roof and then glides along the back of her teeth. Whatever part of Grace that had been collected last is now long gone. Frankie’s heart trips a little at this.

“Yeah,” Grace agrees, her own voice carrying a tinge of something heavy. 

Frankie’s own thoughts grow darker amid the realization of loss. Now, it’s only the flavor of Grace, but her own fears run rampant and Frankie can’t help but feel apprehension rise at never again being able to place her hands on Grace’s hips, no longer being able to see them shift to accommodate good feelings. Not so long ago, the equation of them held a lot more people and Frankie can’t help but immediately dislike anything and everything that contains nothing but them and them alone. 

For what the sale of the beach house and Walden Villas took away, it also helped to strip all of the shit that didn’t matter too. They’re down false pretenses, stilted half-truths, and lives filled with words and bodies that help them just get by. Still, Frankie can’t help but feel this nagging her. Can’t help but feeling like Grace is leaving behind a life she wasn’t quite ready to give up.

“That was Teddie. Which you know because you answered my phone,” Frankie begins, splashes a bit with her foot. “She says she’s finally cool with you.” 

Beside her, Grace snorts derisively and picks up Frankie’s hand. “Oh, good. I was worried I’d have to ask for her permission to…” 

She trails off when Frankie raises her head, looks at Grace and the unspoken is hanging. Frankie’s heart hammers in earnest now and she’s sure the wild thumping of it can be heard for miles. 

“Is there something to ask permission for, Grace?” Frankie says lowly, teasingly with a soft nudge. 

“You’re acting like there isn’t. Last night…” Grace inhales and then lets it out, not looking at Frankie but the water in front of them, “I asked you to not to tell me no. To what I was asking for then. The same applies to today. I’m not running or ignoring or pretending. I don't want to have to ask anyone to be with you, but I would if that’s what you needed from me.”

“Have you talked to Nick since you dumped him at Walden Villas?” Frankie interjects, topic totally out of left field so it seems. But there’s a point. 

“Wow, way to completely bypass everything I just said,” Grace says incredulously. Frankie feels her backing away from the touching points of their bodies. Her hip slides away as her fingers disengage. 

“Grace…”

“Do you have any idea how hard all of this has been for me? How difficult it’s been to let go of all of the bullshit and just allow myself to want you? I can’t even believe I told you how I feel out loud, much less act on it and all you have to say is a bunch of crap about Nick?”

She’s somehow managed to get herself upright and is now pacing and Frankie can feel the agitation radiate and permeate. She still stands by her question because it is valid but now, she feels a little guilty for asking it. Slower to rise than Grace, she stands finally and grabs the other woman’s shoulders. 

“Yeah, I did. Because if we go down this road, I can’t give you what he gave you. Not even a fraction of it. Not even a minuscule amount. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, even though I’m devilishly charming with a great head of hair too, but I can’t be a man for you from now on.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Grace shoots, warning in her tone. Frankie continues on anyway. 

“Your life will never be filled with fancy restaurants, penthouses overlooking the best part of the Pacific, or jet setting to some far off spot I can’t even pronounce the name to. Are you willing to give that up? Are you sure you won’t miss it?”

“There’s more to Nick than just stuff,” Grace settles a bit but seems to be grasping what Frankie is throwing. “He’s kind and witty and sarcastic in all of the good ways.”

“Except for fucking with people’s little old lady business, but do continue on your trek with me down nightmare road,” Frankie grumbles.

At the last iteration of a word, Grace is kissing her and that bad dream trip now seems like it never occurred at all. Grace moves her hand from Frankie’s waist to her back, pushing her palm into the lower area of it. She grips Frankie’s shoulder tightly, holding them into place and fusing them together. She kisses and kisses and  _ damn _ , kisses until Frankie’s head spins and who is Nick again?

“I miss him in my own way, Frankie. But the parts of life that matter, truly, are the ones I have with you. Give me vegan take out in plastic containers, our home where we have continually lived our life together, and the comfort of your arms as the only place I want to be. When I went to Walden Villas, I gave up my old life for you. I chose you that day. I’ve been choosing you every damn day since then. How can you not see?”

Lots of things can melt. Candles. Substances that go into fondue pots. But people? No. Not people. People can’t actually melt, but Frankie feels like a puddle of Grace goo when she finishes her speech. 

“So you and me and hot grandma sex till the end of time?” Frankie tries. It doesn’t hurt to crack a joke to take the edge off of Grace’s mood. Or a sort of joke. She thinks that she could coast right on through to the end if Grace’s body is a constant she can ask for any time.

“I could live with that,” Grace smiles. “Last night was pretty incredible.”

“And we’ve only just begun to touch the surface of all that’s possible, Grace! The things we could do to each other,  _ for _ each other. 

“Through Nick’s and Teddie’s and horrible house selling children, oh my?”

“Through it all,” Frankie nods. Grasping Grace’s hand, she holds it tightly, brings it to her mouth and kisses every part of its surface before holding it to her heart. 

The sunlight shimmers off of the gentle lapping waters splashing the concrete. Frankie squints, looks around at the patio chairs a that have faded to a lighter, paler shade than they used to be. Everything around wanting to be remembered, used.

“Why the fuck do we have a pool?” she asks.

Grace’s answering laugh rings into the air and she gently begins to pull Frankie by the hand into their home, the one they’ve left and returned to. The one that holds the beauty of their lives. The one Frankie can’t bear to leave or inhabit without Grace by her side. 

“Beats me. But according to you, we’ve got a lot of testing out to do. Maybe a little naked water therapy?” Grace smiles and wraps her arms around Frankie’s neck.

“Mmm, let’s fast forward to part of that right now then,” Frankie says leaning in to take Grace’s bottom lip into her own, hand batting the doors shut. 

From outside, muted laughter and other sounds developing. Inside, warmth unending. Life adjusting. Happiness on repeat. 


End file.
